Texas GOP doubles down on fraud claims as Trump, Cruz leads shrink
by Saul Elbein - 08/27/24 2:07 PM ET

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4850214-texas-gop-trump-cruz-shrink-lead/

AUSTIN – Texas Republicans are doubling down on claims that Democrats in the state’s biggest cities are attempting to steal the 2024 election – a contest in which the GOP’s leads in the Senate and presidential races are increasingly narrowing.

State GOP leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have made the state’s large urban counties a focus of allegations of a grand Democratic conspiracy to steal the 2024 election.

On Tuesday, Abbott announced that his office had removed more than 1 million “ineligible” voters from state rolls, including “more than 6,500 noncitizens,” of which the governor’s office claimed that “almost 2,000 have cast votes.”

Abbott added that those cases would be referred to prosecution to Paxton’s office — which has been on its own campaign against alleged voter fraud as of late.

Paxton falsely told right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck last Thursday that President Biden and Vice President Harris, now at the top of the ticket, had worked to move masses of undocumented voters into critical states to vote illegally — claims he did not back up with any basis.

“This was the plan, tell the cartels, ‘Get people here as fast as possible, as many as possible, we’re not going to make them hide anymore — we’ll get them placed in the right states,’” Paxton said. “They want to fix the election so that we have a one party country that we can’t fix.”

“No one anticipated the federal govt would work around laws to try to get illegals to vote. But here we are,” Paxton added, in a grab from the interview he posted on the social platform X.

“That’s why we have to send a message out from the states: ‘Hey illegals, this is not a free ride. If we catch you, we’re going to prosecute you.’”

I wonder how much was embezzled and is being used to buy Pocahontas a new mansion
https://www.wcvb.com/article/massgop-demands-information-about-dollar1-billion-in-secret-migrant-crisis-spending/61983058

Pure evil was defeated today.
https://apnews.com/article/gun-control-tennessee-memphis-election-02e4f7295bf75b8fc159da8e31b27ec6

https://www.businessinsider.com/kamala-harris-donald-trump-debate-microphone-philadelphia-2024-8

Kamala Harris' campaign has a new demand for her debate with Donald Trump: that each candidate's microphone stays unmuted the whole time.

"The VP is ready to debate Trump live and uncensored," Harris' advisor Brian Fallon wrote on X on Monday. "Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button."

Fallon suggested that Trump's campaign would not agree to that condition, writing that Trump "should reject his handlers' attempts to muzzle him via a muted microphone."

A Trump spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on whether that's true. But more broadly, Trump's campaign is complaining that the Harris campaign is making new demands about the debate, set to be held on September 10 in Philadelphia.

"Now that they've started their debate prep with Harris, they're wanting to change the rules," the Trump advisor Jason Miller wrote on X. "What is it they're seeing that has them worried?"

Miller also told Politico that Harris' campaign "asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements." Fallon told the outlet that the campaign didn't push for any notes or for the candidates to be seated.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/23/georgia-election-deniers-pass-new-laws-election-chaos

Conservative activists in Georgia have worked with prominent election deniers to pass a series of significant changes to the procedures for counting ballots in recent weeks, raising alarm about the potential for confusion and interference in the election certification process in a key swing state this fall.

Since the beginning of August, the five-member state election board has adopted rules that allow local election boards to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results before they are certified, and to allow any local election board member “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results”. The same rule also requires local boards to reconcile any discrepancies between the total number of ballots cast and the number of voters who check in. If it can’t reconcile the numbers, the board is authorized to come up with a way to figure out which votes count and which do not.

At its upcoming meeting in September, the board is also expected to approve a measure that would require local officials to hand-count ballots to check the machine tabulations. Experts have warned that hand-counts are unreliable, costly and time-consuming.

Georgia law requires county officials to certify an election no later than 5pm on the Monday following election day (the deadline will be one day later this year because of a state holiday). Legal experts have noted that state law is clear about that deadline and that none of the recent rules change that.

But at the same time, observers are concerned new changes are seeding the ground to give local county commissioners justifications to object to the certification of the vote.

Head of Latino Democratic group has his house raided for voter fraud.
For some weird reason the dude had 65 cell phones on hand during the raid that were confiscated.
He's accused of violating laws pertaining to mail ballot fraud and obtaining or possessing identifying information about other people without their consent
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/ken-paxton-latino-democrats-raids-19720940.php
Longtime Bexar County political consultant Manuel Medina was among a group of Latino Democrats whose homes were raided Tuesday as part of a voter fraud investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Agents “forcibly entered” Medina’s home early Tuesday morning, waking up his family, including two young daughters, and proceeded to search the home for about seven hours, according to court documents. They seized documents, 65 cell phones and “41 computers (and) digital and other storage devices.”

Medina chairs Tejano Democrats, the largest Latino Democratic political organization in Texas, and is the former head of the Bexar County Democratic Party. He is currently working on the campaign of House District 80 Democratic candidate Cecilia Castellano. Castellano’s home was also raided Tuesday.

He blasted the effort as a politically motivated attempt to hurt Castellano, whose Republican and pro-school vouchers opponent Don McLaughlin has been endorsed by all of the state’s top Republicans, including Paxton. McLaughlin is also the former mayor of Uvalde and led the city at the time of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

Medina said he knows of at least 13 search warrants that have been executed over the last few months to people involved in the House District 80 race.

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article291201695.html

Approximately 500,000 noncitizen spouses and 50,000 noncitizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens could be eligible to access President Biden’s Keeping Families Together program, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

“This is an extension of an existing program known as parole in place,” said Matias Bernal, executive director of the Fresno-based Educational Foundation, adding that the executive order that President Joe Biden announced on June 17, extends the program to those two new categories. Federal officials announced the specifics of the program on Monday.

“This program helps create and close the gap where families don’t have to be separated,” said Xavier Vázquez Báez, immigration services program manager with Centro La Familia Advocacy Services Inc. in Fresno. “This is not immigration reform. This just helps close the gap from doing consular process and reducing wait times.”

“It’s a little Band-Aid,” Vázquez Báez said.

If granted parole, noncitizen spouses and noncitizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens, if eligible, could apply for lawful permanent residence without leaving the country.

“Too often, noncitizen spouses of U.S. citizens – many of them mothers and fathers – live with uncertainty due to undue barriers in our immigration system,” said Ur M. Jaddou, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in a statement. “This process to keep U.S. families together will remove these undue barriers for those who would otherwise qualify to live and work lawfully in the U.S.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-would-give-undocumented-first-time-homebuyers-funds-despite-budget-deficit-advances

The founder of Telegram was arrested on dozens of criminal charges because he ran an encrypted messaging app
He's being accused of pretty much every type of crime that telegram users may have committed.
This has totally nothing to do with the Ukraine war and is a totally just action.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/telegram-messaging-app-ceo-pavel-durov-arrested-france-tf1-tv-says-2024-08-24/
Telegram messaging app CEO Durov arrested in France, Billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV and BFM TV said, citing unnamed sources.
Telegram, particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union, is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat. It aims to hit one billion users in the next year.
Based in Dubai, Telegram was founded by Russian-born Durov. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.
Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The French Interior Ministry and police had no comment.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has become the main source of unfiltered - and sometimes graphic and misleading - content from both sides about the war and the politics surrounding the conflict.

Step 1: Have a schizo post a retarded theory on Twitter
Step 2: Have a drunken Fox News contributor repeat the unsubstantiated theory on air
Step 3: Have a criminal Attorney General start an investigation based on those schizo rumors
Step 4: Pretend this is a legitimate investigation, despite not having any proof

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/26/texas-voter-registration-election-ken-paxton-investigation/

Officials in a North Texas county debunked claims made by a Fox News host that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth — an unsubstantiated claim that appeared to spark an investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.

Both the Parker County Republican chair and election administrator said there was no evidence to support the Aug. 18 social media post made by television personality Maria Bartiromo, who previously promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Paxton’s office announced it was opening an investigation into “reports that organizations operating in Texas may be unlawfully registering noncitizens to vote” Wednesday.

In announcing the investigation, the attorney general’s office said investigators confirmed that nonprofits had booths set up outside of license offices to offer voter registration assistance, though it did not state specifically where these offices were located.

The attorney general’s office statement did not say any laws were broken.

The Department of Public Safety, which managed the state’s drivers license offices, said in an email obtained by The Texas Tribune that voter registration groups would not be allowed to recruit new voters outside those locations — a response to allegations that so far have not been proven true.

Neither the attorney general’s office nor the public safety department responded to questions about the investigation.