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Democrats keep promising to fix the country’s problems. But many refuse to name the corporate interests standing in the way.

Republicans hold both chambers and publicly back the president’s signature bill that would curtail mail-in voting and enforce strict voter ID laws. Here, a public policy and politics scholar explains why it still isn’t law.

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 government shelled out almost $2 million in a no-bid emergency contract to clean up a diesel spill that occurred under the watch of Freedom 250, the shadowy organization through which President Donald Trump is administering semiquincentennial celebrations.In May, Freedom 250 and a Trump-tied event management company, Event Strategies Inc., installed temporary lighting while setting up the Great American State Fair on the National Mall. Then, on May 20, fuel lines on the lighting equipment spilled at least 30 gallons of fuel onto the mall. The fuel seeped underground, contaminating rainwater repositories used to irrigate the mall. And another spill of an unknown quantity came soon after.The government awarded a “rushed, no-bid contract” of $1.8 million for the cleanup, reported Anna Kramer of NOTUS Friday. It took two months for the contract, which was awarded to Maryland-based business Custom Lawn Service Inc, to be posted publicly. Officials told Kramer that was due to the “emergency nature of the situation.”Government records reported in May by The New York Times suggest the spill was due to negligence, originating “from event-related equipment that lacked required secondary and tertiary containment measures.” But the Trump administration has described hiccups in its 250th celebrations as the fault of left-wing saboteurs, and this time was no different: The administration alleged that vandals slashed the fuel lines.The government does not ordinarily foot the bill for such cleanup jobs. Permit holders are typically held “liable for the environmental mitigation after a spill of such magnitude,” NBC News reported last month. Accordingly, hundreds of concerned citizens petitioned for Freedom 250, not the taxpayer, to be made financially responsible, but their calls apparently fell on deaf ears.The $1.8 million price tag is also markedly higher than initially estimated. According to the Times, the National Park Service in May was seeking a contractor for $1.1 million, and an interior department spokesperson said the cleanup “could end up costing far less.”

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.

In Seattle, restaurant workers walked out, while Hilton Embassy Suites employees have been on strike since June 18.

President Trump’s rant to the nation about election fraud Thursday night was full of inaccuracies, previously known information, and claims unsupported by evidence. On the biggest conservative TV network, Fox News, which Trump watches regularly, no one is giving it much attention Friday morning.Matthew Gertz of Media Matters, a nonprofit that monitors right-wing media, wrote that Fox News’s Friday morning programming prioritized several other stories over Trump’s speech. Among the stories covered were Caitlin Clark’s WNBA game Thursday night, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policies toward landlords, Fox’s World Cup coverage for Sunday’s final, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s antifa summit Thursday. Fox & Friends didn’t even mention the speech.It’s a continuation of how the network treated the speech last night. Laura Ingraham didn’t even discuss the speech, even though Trump was scheduled to speak just two hours later. Jesse Watters gave it a passing mention at the end of his show, prioritizing one of his correspondents interviewing people in bathing suits at Central Park. Sean Hannity gave the speech a small amount of discussion and said his show would look into it in the coming days.The most attention Fox gave to the speech was on Special Report, with Hugh Hewitt saying in advance of the speech that he hoped Trump would focus on renewed hostilities in the Iran war, as it was “vital that the president keep that in mind that American servicemen and women are in harm’s way when he is on the air.”The network’s reluctance to give Trump’s speech heavy coverage may have something to do with the hefty settlement Fox News was forced to pay in 2023 to get rid of a lawsuit over how it covered election denial conspiracies from the 2020 presidential election pushed by Trump and his allies. Or it also could be due to the fact that Trump was just repeating old, tired claims of election fraud, and making up new claims of foreign interference without evidence. Maybe Fox sees that Trump is desperately trying in vain to forestall a big defeat this November.