Articles & Videos

Lindsey Graham’s sister has spent decades in South Carolina’s disability services, earning praise from advocates who hope she’ll bring that expertise to Congress. Unlike her late brother Lindsey, whose political career spanned 33 years, Darline Graham has never run for or held elected office — until she was appointed to serve the remainder of the [...] The post Darline Graham’s career centered on disability. Now she could help shape national policy. appeared first on DCReport.org.

The Trump administration has promised to stonewall federal grants unless states “scrub” their voter rolls and to imprison state officials who refuse to comply.Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced during a press conference in Washington Friday that state officials who refuse Washington’s new election demands could be jailed for their disobedience.“If the states choose not to participate with the state program, and they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states, and hold them—the election officials—accountable,” Mullin said. “If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even—depending on how far it goes—prison time.”The pledge came hours after Donald Trump delivered a national address that not only included numerous factual inaccuracies and vast exaggerations about how he lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, but also weaponized those conspiracies in an attempt to undermine American trust in future elections.“Working with [Commerce] Secretary [Howard] Lutnick, we are going to make our security enhancements mandatory. Meaning that if these states want a grant, and they want to be reimbursed to run federal elections, they are going to have to implement security issues,” Mullin said. “Just security issues. We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines have to be secured and that your voter registration lists need to be scrubbed.”“We need to make sure that individuals legally able to vote are voting.”The homeland security chief confidently announced the plot while standing in front of several American flags, despite the fact that the entire scheme is most likely illegal and that he is acting far outside the limitations of his office and even the executive branch. Homeland Security lacks the necessary authority to either withhold federal grants or force states to purge voter rolls. Only Congress has the power to do that.Beyond that, voter fraud is a statistical nonissue in American elections. For instance, a 2024 statewide audit out of Georgia—the epicenter of one of Trump’s baseless 2020 theories—revealed that 20 non-citizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, just 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections many years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.This story has been updated.

Donald Trump promised federal cuts under the Elon Musk–led Department of Government Efficiency would “drive out the massive waste.” Indeed, waste is now being expelled on an incredible scale, across the country: A diarrhea-causing parasite, cyclosporiasis, has sickened thousands of people in more than two-thirds of U.S. states. And the outbreak’s severity—evidence increasingly shows—can be attributed at least partly to DOGE.According to a Friday report by WIRED, DOGE cuts significantly reduced the size of the team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responsible for responding to cyclospora outbreaks. The lab was “downsized from 11 people to just three” last year, parasitologist Joel Barratt, who formerly led that operation, told the publication.“Based on simple math, these outbreak responses—which require rapid, timely responses—are going to be greatly diminished,” Barratt told WIRED. “Cyclospora is just one piece. It’s making the news right now, but there are other, more dangerous pathogens than cyclospora.”That’s not the only way Trump’s cuts have hamstrung the response. In an analysis at The American Prospect, for example, Ryan Cooper details how the administration devastated American food safety and public health infrastructure in ways relevant to the outbreak. Additionally, in July 2025, the CDC under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. quietly changed the monitoring of cyclospora from mandatory to optional in Foodnet, its pathogen-tracking partnership with 10 state health departments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration.With WIRED’s report, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s claim Thursday that the administration’s funding cuts did not impact the response to the outbreak “at all” sounds more dubious than it already did.Describing the wreckage left in DOGE’s wake, one GOP senator recently coined the phrase “DOGE shit.” The department’s increasingly apparent role in exacerbating this outbreak suggests there’s more mileage in that pun—a couple social media wordsmiths have already seized on it, nicknaming cyclospora “the DOGE shits.”

New details are emerging about the ICE agent who shot and killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero on Monday.David Brouillette has a history of violent and abusive behavior, his relatives told the Associated Press, including attacks on the women and girls in his life. His first ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, said that she divorced him after he became violent with her while she was pregnant with their daughter.In one instance, she told the AP, he threw boiling water at her while she was holding their daughter, which her mother, Avis Collins, also confirmed. In court records, another of Brouillette’s ex-wives also alleged years of physical and verbal abuse against her and her daughters. The AP did not identify her because she fears retaliation.Brouillette’s second ex-wife said he stalked and harassed her, and engaged in physical and verbal abuse against his daughter, forcing them to seek temporary protection orders. Brouillette allegedly tackled his teenage daughter, smashed spaghetti in her hair, and one in instance, dragged her around the house while she was crying.“Dave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression,” the ex-wife wrote while applying for a temporary protective order on behalf of Brouillette’s teenage daughter, which a judge granted in 2021.Brouillette’s oldest daughter, Madison, also told the AP about her father’s mental health issues.“I saw my dad struggle with a lot of things,” she said, recalling one instance where she came home from school and he told her that he had sat on a tree stump holding a gun to his head. “If you don’t really, truly take care of yourself, there’s no way you can protect other people. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help.”One relative anonymously told the AP that Brouillette was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and severe bipolar disorder as a kid, which Ashley Brouillette confirmed. That relative said that David Brouillette was “extremely mentally ill,” attempting suicide when he was 12 years old and having to go to the hospital. His ex-wife Ashley shared a three-minute voicemail with the AP from last winter where he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.In that message, sent around the time he joined ICE, he called her “disgusting” and said that she and other women and girls in her “bloodline” should die.“And all of you should have your f—king throats cut,” Brouillette’s voicemail said. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f—king throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”Brouillette reached out to Ashley and his daughter Madison after the shooting, telling them it was justified and that Durán Guerrero tried to run him over with a car. In those calls, he told his ex-wife to lie for him and to cover for his “character.” Based on his history, that was a lost cause.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s meeting with several Epstein survivors was a major bust. The Thursday meeting was an obvious gambit for Senate support for Blanche’s potential promotion to permanent attorney general. The encounter was arranged hours after Republican Senator Thom Tillis said that his vote for Blanche’s confirmation would be predicated on whether the acting attorney general met with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.During the second day of Blanche’s committee confirmation hearing, Epstein victim Dani Bensky warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that Blanche had dodged her and other victims for months, yet showed a sudden willingness to talk shop once he needed them to advance his Senate confirmation.By 4 p.m., the meeting was a go, as several survivors were spotted filing into the Justice Department. Two hours later, however, they reappeared outside the building, looking “distraught and emotional,” according to MS NOW. Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, informed reporters outside the Justice Department: “I think we have a little ways to go here.”“It had absolutely nothing to do with us, and it had everything to do with Blanche checking a box so that he can get a promotion,” Epstein victim and anti–human trafficking educator Elizabeth Stein told the network. “I don’t think that we had high expectations going into this meeting. I certainly did not. But I didn’t expect to walk out of the meeting feeling the way that we feel right now.” “It was demoralizing, to say the very least,” she added.Stein recalled that Blanche was completely unwilling to provide the group with anything substantial, actively dodging questions and refusing to provide assurances that his department would follow up on potential investigative leads. She noted that he could not provide a concrete explanation for Ghislaine Maxwell’s cushy prison transfer to a low-security prison camp, and wouldn’t clarify the improper redactions rampant throughout the released Epstein files.“It just felt like more political posturing and using survivors the way that we’ve been used as political pawns,” Stein continued. “We’re victims of the crime of sex trafficking. And the fact that our Department of Justice will not take that seriously is beyond concerning, not just to us, but should be concerning to Americans all across this country.”Epstein survivor Annie Farmer told ABC News she is “even more confident in urging senators to vote against his confirmation as the United States Attorney General” after finally meeting Blanche face to face.“I found him abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors—a marked contrast to his public testimony during his confirmation hearing,” said Farmer, who served as a key witness for the government during Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial.Tillis did not feel the same way: The North Carolina senator indicated over social media Thursday evening that he was satisfied by Blanche’s efforts. “I commend Todd Blanche for doing what all his predecessors over the last two decades never did: meet with the victims of Jeffery Epstein’s horrific crimes,” Tillis wrote. “I appreciate his willingness to directly engage and listen to them.”

As the world races to reduce its dependence on China, African governments have rare leverage. The challenge is turning that bargaining power into lasting industry.

The move aims to make the telecommunications sector more competitive.

President Trump’s wild claims of election fraud made in a speech to the nation Thursday night contradict the findings from the declassified documents his administration released.In his 27-minute speech, Trump complained that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and accused China of stealing and hacking into voting data to prevent his victory, touting the newly declassified documents as evidence. Those documents didn’t support the claims he was making.Much of the information in the more than 270 pages released presented information already known from 2020 and 2021, with the new details nowhere near earth-shattering. For example, China looked at ways to affect U.S. public opinion, downloading public voter rolls in multiple states (which are already easy to download or purchase). But that’s been known for years, and there was no proof China messed with any ballots or voting machines.Another document from the Department of Homeland Security declared that over 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in Pennsylvania, Nevada, California, and New Jersey, but did not include any supporting evidence. Officials in those states also pushed back against the claims.A declassified 2021 U.S. intelligence report also contradicts Trump’s claim of foreign actors altering election results. That document found no proof that any overseas actor tried to, or succeeded in, changing “any technical aspect” of the 2020 presidential election, including ballots, voter registrations, results, or the counting process.Trump cited two CIA documents to back up his claim of China’s election meddling, and posted them to the White House website. But again, those documents don’t support his words, and in some cases they say the opposite. One document, for example, said that Russia, China, Iran, and other countries were capable of interfering with voting and stealing sensitive information, but didn’t say that they actually engaged in those actions.Trump only mentioned Russia in passing during his speech, but the declassified documents highlight Russian interference. The same document said that China wanted Trump to lose and tried to shift public opinion also warned that Russia was boosting the president’s campaign. Russia was singled out as the sole country trying to interfere in American election processes. Russia also tried to amplify corruption stories about Hunter Biden and undermine faith in mail-in voting, much like Trump, the documents reveal.What was the purpose of Trump’s speech? Much of the information presented was already known, and his comments about China aren’t even backed up by the evidence the White House itself provided. As recently as May, Trump praised China in a visit to the country, saying that the two countries would have a “fantastic future together.” It seems as though the president just wanted to undermine confidence in advance of elections that are forecasted to go badly for him.

The president said the fund was aimed at improving the country’s education system, a major constraint on development.