true the vote

In the aftermath of President Donald Trump's Secretary of the Army resigning on Monday — amidst a purge of military personnel equating to more than nine centuries of experience — a new report reveals that the outgoing officer was deeply alarmed at Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's gutting of America's armed forces.

"During a White House meeting last week, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll brought his concerns about the future of the Army under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directly to President Trump — a sign of how far tensions between the two Pentagon leaders had escalated, and of the dysfunction inside the building, four people familiar with the conversation told us," reported The Atlantic's Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan and Michael Scherer on Monday. "Trump was surprised when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth, one of the people said. Driscoll argued that the Army could not transform itself the way it needs to because of the departure of so many leaders, this person said, adding that Trump expressed concern about the deep cuts to the Army’s senior leadership. Driscoll informed the president of his intention to resign — and by today, Driscoll was on his way out."

The journalists added, "Hegseth’s purge of the military has been so dramatic that with Driscoll gone, the military’s largest service is left without a top civilian leader, a Senate-confirmed top general, a confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or a confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. Because of all the firings across the service over the past year, the Army, with more than 450,000 active-duty soldiers positioned across the globe, has fewer generals than at any point in recent history. Driscoll’s personal appeal to Trump just days before his exit was the most direct articulation of high-level concerns among Pentagon leaders about the strains facing the force — including Hegseth’s intervention in Army personnel decisions and the mounting demands of the Iran war."

They also observed that Hegseth's rationales for firing people and withholding promotions have demoralized the ranks.

"The Army has long prided itself on representing the diversity of the country, but under Hegseth, minorities and women have been pushed out or barred from promotion," Youssef, Ryan and Scherer wrote. "The military has long sought to be apolitical, but under Hegseth, troops are measured not by combat experience but by their perceived loyalty to the administration. Among the generals fired have been some of the most experienced and decorated in the service. Each departure marks the loss of decades of investment in that soldier and raises questions about how future troops can rise through the ranks."

Driscoll left his position after months of clashing with Hegseth. According to a report by The Washington Post in April, “Hegseth and Driscoll have disagreed on numerous issues, including Hegseth’s moves to block the promotions of several Army officers." They added that if Driscoll stepped down, Trump might replace him with Hegseth's top spokesman Sean Parnell, which alarms observers as Parnell is perceived as being just as political and interested in culture war battles as Hegseth himself.

A self-described "3-time Trump voter" complained on Twitter that she is upset with President Donald Trump's policies — but also refused to admit she voted wrong in the 2024 election.

"I say this as a 3-time Trump voter, a lifelong Republican who spent an embarrassing amount of money on merch and travel to Trump rallies and DC," Lucy Riles posted on X. "I was duped. The past 14 months have been betrayal after betrayal. It sucks admitting I got it wrong. No, I’m not saying Kamala [Harris] would have been better. But Trump is a politician, a glorified snake oil salesman. He is not God nor should he be worshiped as one. And we need to hold our politicians accountable. Especially the ones we voted for and sacrificed friendships, jobs and family over."

Riles added, "Trump is now attempting to bully his base into supporting another reckless foreign war, ignore the Epstein files and now, accept data centers or else you want to be 'backwards and poor.' I’ve never been in an emotionally abusive relationship[,] and I’m not about to start now."

She concluded, "Thank you for your attention to this matter."

Earlier in August, a separate three-time Trump voter complained on MS NOW that even though the president promised to reduce inflation once in office, "the prices haven't gone down. I don't know, I'm just, I'm over it, I think, over the Trump thing, the Trump wagon — whatever you want to call it."

Another Trump voter griped, “It's hard. It makes me feel like I'm a horrible mother sometimes because I'm stressing about what I'm going to do — do I have enough money to put gas in, or do I need to buy eggs and milk for my child? Or do I need to not go to work every day to make that money because gas prices are so expensive?”

That voter concluded, “And mind you, it could be my fault — I do work in cleaning, but still, that's a 45-minute drive. We're putting 80 bucks in every three days, tops, maybe. It's just hard to feel good when everything's going downhill, I feel like. It's supposed to be going up, and sometimes, yes, it is up, and then all of a sudden it just goes down. And then we're always told, you know, ‘this is going to change’ or ‘I'm going to make this better’ or ‘we're going to make this better’ — but where's it at? We're not seeing it at all.”

Also earlier in August, a Trump voter and Iowan named Stephen Foot observed to MS NOW that "the prices haven't gone down. I don't know, I'm just, I'm over it, I think, over the Trump thing, the Trump wagon — whatever you want to call it." Still another Trump voter proclaimed earlier in August that, regarding the war in Iran, “Enough! Bring our guys and girls home. I don't want to see it — I don't like seeing war, that's all. We need to protect our borders and keep our family here safe.”

More recently, and also on Monday, former MAGA lawmaker ex-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) accused Trump of "disloyalty" to his own base.

"I hear this from people literally every single day," Greene posted on X. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying this and demanding your elected leaders deliver exactly what they promised you when you voted, donated, and supported them. The disloyalty comes from Trump, not people like this."

President Donald Trump's ongoing trade war with Canada just took a major turn — and it was not in the president's interests.

"In Texas and New York, big oil and big money are placing their bets on the future of the energy industry," reported The Globe and Mail's Andrew Willis on Monday. "Major American oil companies and asset managers are lining up to invest in Canadian infrastructure. They seem to have missed U.S. President Donald Trump’s weekend Truth Social post declaring 'I don’t want Canadian anything.'"

Describing the companies in question as ExxonMobil Holdings Corp., ConocoPhillips, KKR & Co. Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc., The Globe and Mail added that they are also steering clear of Venezuela, which Trump set his sights on earlier this year.

"The American economy runs on Canadian energy," Willis pointed out. "Last year, the U.S. imported $160-billion of oil, gas and electricity from its northern neighbour. Mr. Trump’s attempt to position Venezuela as a counter to Canada’s strongest suits is a bad bluff."

He continued, "The President’s anti-Canada policies are undermined by the actions of the largest U.S. oil companies and biggest asset managers. They are all investing in a robust long-term Canadian relationship. The larger lesson from Mr. Trump’s recent Truth Social postings on Venezuela and Canada is what they say about the President’s declining relevance."

This is not the first report to indicate that Trump's attempt to bully Canada into winning a trade war against the United States has spectacularly failed.

“As Carney prepared to walk away — a rare example of a foreign leader telling the president ‘enough’ — Trump was retreating on another trade front,” reported The Washington Post's David J. Lynch earlier in August. “On Friday, after insisting for more than a year that tariffs do not affect consumer prices, he lifted tariffs on beef imports, saying the move would lead to lower grocery prices.”

Lynch added, “The two developments, coupled with legal challenges to Trump’s tariffs, leave the president’s signature economic policy in a state of flux.”

Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator and currently senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, also told the Post that Trump's Canada trade war has reached “a juncture where other countries may be very closely watching how this plays out as they also are becoming increasingly frustrated with the demands the U.S. is placing on them in these largely one-sided trade agreements.”

Trump is also failing on the PR front in his trade war against Canada, most recently in trying to retaliate against Canada by renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America.

"Throughout his political career, Trump’s signature skill has been to drive the conversation where he wanted it to go. He declares victory when things have not been won," wrote Slate's Ben Jacobs on Monday. "He ducks attribution with the rhetorical tic 'many people are saying,' frequently followed by things that people are decidedly not saying. He posts outrageous graphics on social media. And, of course, he renames things: Political opponents get nicknames, buildings get Trump’s name, and bodies of water get America’s name."

Yet that has not worked with the Lake Ontario gambit, indicating that Trump's "superpower" with PR may be waning.

President Donald Trump's war in Iran has become increasingly unpopular, not only among independents and Democrats but even his own Republican base. Now a new report reveals that the war is worrying America's top military officials about whether they can do their jobs in their assigned regions of the world.

"A remarkable story in Monday’s Washington Post dramatizes how deeply the Iran war has degraded the U.S. military’s ability to fend off attacks by adversaries elsewhere in the world," reported Slate's Fred Kaplan on Monday. "The story is based on the leak of a little-known classified document, which itself signifies that we’ve reached a new stage in the growing turmoil among the senior officer corps over the chaotic reign of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth."

Kaplan added, "The leaked document reveals that the three four-star commanders in charge of U.S. military operations in Europe, the Pacific,and South America, as well as the Navy’s top admiral, all informed Hegseth that because so many of their planes, ships and other weapons systems have been diverted to the war in Iran, they could no longer perform their tasks if a war broke out in their part of the world."

The journalist also contextualized the current concerns in the broader paradigm of American military history, noting that it is highly unusual for so many top military officials to express the same concern.

"The story is remarkable partially because of the scope," Kaplan wrote. "A former senior Navy officer and a retired Navy operations officer told me that past commanders have occasionally filed statements warning of risk — similar to the non-concur notes. But it is unusual for so many commanders to file such notes all at once in the middle of a combat operation. And it is still more unusual, perhaps unprecedented, for such reports to be filed by these commanders, who have been chosen — or allowed to remain in their top slots — for their loyalty to Donald Trump and Hegseth."

He added, "As several news agencies have reported, Hegseth has thrown much of the defense establishment — officers, enlisted personnel, and civilians — into disarray through his loyalty tests and other quirky demands. He has blocked the promotion of at least 45 officers, reversing the military services’ peer-review boards, whose decisions are very rarely challenged."

In addition to the supply issues, Trump has also struggled with his military because he often fires senior officers to replace them with personal loyalists.

“A series of firings and feuds initiated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has left the Army essentially rudderless as it struggles to deal with the threat posed by cheap, deadly drones and missiles that have pounded U.S. bases in the Middle East,” reported The New York Times' Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Adam Entous earlier in August. “The Army has not had a chief of staff, the service’s top officer, since Mr. Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George without explanation in April, and there are no signs that he is close to filling the position, said current and former officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.”

"Since January 2025," New York University law professor Michael N. Schmitt recently wrote, "the Defense Department has removed, replaced, or forced the early retirement of a remarkable concentration of operationally experienced senior officers. Among them are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the Army, and the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, who concurrently serves as director of the National Security Agency. Most recently, Gen. Christopher Donahue, one of the most decorated and combat-experienced officers of his generation, has been forced out as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and, in his NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) role, as commander of Allied Land Command. Public explanations have been sparse and, to the extent they have been offered, largely general."

Schmitt added, "The question regarding these departures is not whether the president and secretary of defense have broad lawful authority to reshape the senior officer corps. They unequivocally do. Nor is it a question of whether personnel decisions of this kind are ever warranted. Sometimes, they certainly are. Instead, at its core, a central question is their impact on the combat effectiveness, indeed the lethality, of our armed forces."

President Donald Trump's ongoing trade war with Canada has not only split his own Republican Party, it has revealed that he has lost what one writer described as a "superhuman ability" — much to his political detriment.

"Throughout his political career, Trump’s signature skill has been to drive the conversation where he wanted it to go. He declares victory when things have not been won," wrote Slate's Ben Jacobs on Monday. "He ducks attribution with the rhetorical tic 'many people are saying,' frequently followed by things that people are decidedly not saying. He posts outrageous graphics on social media. And, of course, he renames things: Political opponents get nicknames, buildings get Trump’s name, and bodies of water get America’s name."

Pointing out that Trump used to be able to commandeer the news cycle with his controversies, and thereby rally his base behind him, he failed to do so by changing Lake Ontario's name to Lake America as a way of taking a swipe at Canada.

"It’s a move we’ve seen before. Immediately upon taking office in 2025, Trump decreed that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America," Jacobs observed. "It was a quick and easy troll for a president who had taken office blaming Mexico for illegal immigration and touting the need to build a wall."

Instead his reference to "Lake America" has, according to Jacobs, become an "instant political shibboleth."

"In the meantime, nothing has changed about Lake Ontario," Jacobs continued. "The water from Niagara Falls still flows down into it and it all still drains down the St. Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing has changed with the trade war between the United States and Canada either. The only thing that will have changed will be a handful of government maps and, of course, the Canadian public’s view of Trump and the United States, which has only somehow gotten worse."

He concluded, "And, of course, Trump was able to drive the news. But not for weeks or even days. Just for a few minutes on a Thursday afternoon in August."

Trump's trade war with Canada has only hurt Americans, as the back-and-forth tariffs are increasing prices on hundreds of goods on which America relies. As economist and President Bill Clinton adviser Dr. Robert J. Shapiro told AlterNet earlier in August, "Just this week, Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on our largest trading partner, Canada, which will further increase inflation."

As Trump's belligerence toward Canada has increased, Canada's leaders have vowed to double down on their tariffs, and in particular targeting Americans from states who supported the president in his election campaigns.

“It’s not a surprise that the US would take some form of reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariffs,” Prime Minister Mark Carney, a member of the center-left Liberal Party, recently announced. “But what message does that send to the workers in Michigan and Ohio and Kentucky and Alabama who rely on Canadian demand? We’re their largest customer for automobiles, more than the European Union, Japan, Korea.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who is part of the rival center-right Progressive Conservative Party, also promised that "the red states, we’re going to hit hard."

While First Lady Melania Trump has profited from her office — whether by releasing a documentary about her life or dumping a self-named memecoin onto the crypto market — she has been conspicuous in her absence from President Donald Trump's White House. Now a journalist who specializes in covering the Trumps explains why.

"It took six months, in Trump’s first term, for his wife to relocate from New York to Washington D.C. — and then, even with separate bedrooms in the White House, she was hardly there," journalist Michael Wolff wrote on his Substack on Monday. "Their son, Barron, was virtually never there. Rather, they “often stayed with,” in White House parlance, her parents in a house in Maryland. Likewise, at Mar-a-Lago, Melania and Barron’s move was actually into a Palm Beach house with her parents — rather than into the country club quarters."

Wolff added, "During the two active years of the 2024 campaign, her only appearances included the Republican Convention, during the days after the attempt on her husband’s life, when she refused to sit next to him, and one event during the final week of the campaign. She refused to attend any of the myriad courtroom appearances related to his four criminal indictments. She published a best-selling book shortly before the election, in which her husband was, at best, a peripheral character — a book neither Trump nor his campaign team saw much before publication."

Ultimately, Wolff wrote that "by the end of the campaign, aides, when queried, were actively seeking new language for the situation: 'She’ll be more like a part-time First Lady.''"

The writer continued that Melania Trump has appeared to have never spent a single night at the White House during Trump's second term, even though she has profited off of being First Lady during that same period to the reported tune of $17 million. When Wolff asked one close Trump aide why she behaved like this, the aide responded that “she hates his f—— guts."

Wolff elaborated on the odd nature of the arrangement between the President and First Lady.

"It’s a new kind of pretend, a particular Trump-style pretend," Wolff wrote. "You pretend so little, and make such a limited effort at it, that everybody knows you’re pretending. Therefore you’re not really pretending. This is a sham marriage, a cynical arrangement, a business deal, or, even an extortive situation, and the American people have a right to know. The only problem with that is they do know."

In fact, Trump's mysterious interactions with staffer Natalie Harp — who reportedly leaves him adoring letters, is invited into his private spaces and rarely leaves his side — can be attributed to his distant relationship with the actual First Lady.

“Trump doesn’t have a wife around him,” The Daily Beast journalist David Rothkopf said on Sunday. “He doesn’t have kids around him. I don’t think he likes his kids — he certainly didn’t go to Don Jr.’s wedding. People beyond, like, one degree of separation can’t be trusted. He’s paranoid.”

President Donald Trump has long seemed fixated on winning a third term as president, from sure signs like openly discussing it and saying he could find a legal framework for obtaining it to obsessing over the number 22, which is the same number as the Constitutional amendment barring presidents from seeking a third term.

Yet according to a recent report, Trump is also considering what his life will be like as a former president.

"President Donald Trump has frequently suggested he wants to seek a third term, posting about mounting another campaign, donning 2028 caps and discussing ways to make it happen — even as he's acknowledged the Constitution prohibits it," reported the Associated Press (AP) on Monday. "But lately, Trump has begun showing signs that even he doesn't really believe another run will happen."

They added, "During recent speeches, the Republican president has begun describing life after the White House when his term ends in January 2029, predicting he'll be at home and agonizing as his successor claims credit for his accomplishments."

As Michigan State University constitutional law professor Brian Kalt told the AP, "He is all over the place, and what that does is, it allows him to point to his own words to support any number of mutually exclusive things."

Kalt added, "'Oh yeah, I made it clear that I wasn't gonna run.' Or, if he decides that he will, he could say, 'Well, you know, I never said I wouldn't.'"

Trump has also said that, once his presidency is over "I'll be sitting home. I may be crying."

During a speech in Pennsylvania, Trump also was ambiguous about his plans.

"In two and a half years, you may have a different president — may," Trump said. "I'll be sitting home. I'll be reading the papers. I'll be watching television. And I'll be having some guy — like last time, a real idiot [President Joe Biden] — stand up and say, 'We are doing record business.'"The president also seemed to contemplate a post-presidential life when he told reporters in the Oval Office that his controversial ballroom is "not for me, 'cause I'm going to be here a very short period of time" and that, because it is projected to be completed in 2028, "I'll be there for four, five, six months. This is for future presidents."

The 22nd Amendment unambiguously bars Trump from seeking another presidential term.

"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once," the Amendment states.

President Donald Trump "has no plans" to use the military to steal the elections, according to a letter sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to a Democratic senator.

In a story reported by ABC's Ben Siegel, Gen. Dan Caine wrote a letter to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) saying "the American Military is a non-partisan Armed Force." He continued that "election administration and security remain the fundamental responsibility of state and local officials. The Joint Force has no plans to send Federal military personnel or Federalized members of the National Guard to polling places during the 2026 elections. Likewise, the Joint Force has no plans to use such personnel to seize ballots, voting machines, or other election-related material."

Caine added, "I have neither received nor anticipate receiving any unlawful order concerning the role of the Joint Force in the upcoming November 2026 midterm elections."

In addition to reports that Trump may seize voting machines using the military, there are also widely-reported concerns that Trump will meddle in the elections by deploying ICE or other radical groups to polling places, stopping mail-in ballots and purging voters from the rolls state-shared voter files and information acquired by DOGE.

“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 in June. “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.” In addition to that intimidating factor, Chaudhuri argued the gerrymandering and FBI seizure of Fulton County, GA 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 argued. “So, to sum up, I do agree that putting it all together, it does paint an ominous picture.”

A recent report reveals that less than half of Republican attorneys general are backing one of President Donald Trump's key voter suppression measures.

"President Donald Trump’s attack on mail voting is reaching a crucial stage in the courts, but he’s only received backup from less than half of the Republican state attorneys general," wrote Alexandra Hutzler on Monday. "Their silence is notable given that they’ve joined other Trump administration priorities. All 27 Republican attorneys general, for example, previously signed onto amicus briefs to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ sports and to defend the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged migrant gang members without due process."

Hutzler added, "Over the weekend, the attorneys general from Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas filed their opposition to a request from blue states and voting rights groups for a preliminary injunction against Trump’s order and the U.S. Postal Service rule to implement it before November’s midterm elections."

The states whose Republican attorneys general have refused to help Trump include "Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming," Hutzler concluded.

Despite the Supreme Court allowing Trump to temporarily proceed with his mail-in voting restrictions, one legal journalist argued that a lower court has called out their own jurisprudential ideology to lay the groundwork for them to halt his actions.

"On Thursday evening, federal district Judge Indira Talwani issued a new order that temporarily blocks an effort by the Trump administration that appears designed to sabotage voting by mail in the upcoming midterm election," wrote Vox's Ian Millhiser on Sunday. "Talwani previously blocked an executive order that President Donald Trump issued in March, which ordered the US Postal Service (USPS) to impose a byzantine array of new regulations on voting by mail, but the Supreme Court reinstated the order on Monday."

Millhiser continued, "Talwani’s new order sets up a new legal fight that is almost certain to return to the justices, and it is unclear whether this Court, with its 6-3 Republican majority, will allow Trump to make sweeping and unilateral changes to how the United States conducts its elections so close to an actual Election Day. That said, while Talwani’s new order in League of Women Voters v. Trump is brief, it is well-crafted to persuade at least some members of the Court’s Republican majority to break with the leader of their political party."

As Trump continues to try to rig the midterms through various voter suppression measures, Democrats throughout America are preparing to push back.

"Eric, Republicans are in control of both chambers of Congress, and they control what comes up for a vote," NPR host Juana Summers recently asked congressional reporter Eric McDaniel. "So what does that leave Democrats actually able to do other than sounding the alarm, speaking out?"

McDaniel also said, "I mean, they're planning, right? They've held tabletop games so they're not caught off guard by the same failure of imagination - what they describe to me as a failure of imagination — that caught them off guard five or six years ago, around January 6. Allied groups are also directly involved in litigation to stop the Department of Justice from obtaining state voter rolls, which they describe both as federal overreach and a pretext to encumber eligible voters."