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FBI agents are worried they might be ordered to seize ballots and voting machines ahead of next week’s midterms. A U.S. senator is warning against the Trump administration’s “insane” plan for a post-election military assault on Iran. A Republican is facing a class-action lawsuit from a former patient he sued over medical debt. And the Trump administration is reviewing proposals to build massive
underwater data centers in the habitats of two endangered whale populations.
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When the FBI agents are the ones calling for legal advice, the rest of us should be worried.
Several current and former FBI officials told MS NOW that agents are concerned they may be ordered to seize ballots or voting machines during next week’s midterm elections. Two FBI analysts in Atlanta were fired in July after they refused to participate in the administration’s probe into the 2020 election, and others fear they could face the same fate if they refuse orders.
Federal law bars armed federal agents from entering polling places, but some officials fear the Department of Justice may seek warrants to seize voting materials. There is already reason to believe that at least one U.S. attorney and one FBI agent would be willing to sign off on such an order, one current official said.
During a September 15 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal asked FBI Director Kash Patel if he would commit to not sending FBI agents to polling places. Patel declined to rule it out, saying he did not know whether the bureau was legally prevented from doing so.
In a podcast interview earlier this month, Trump told former FBI official Dan Bongino that Republicans need to “nationalize” elections and “take over the voting” in at least 15 states. Attorney General Todd Blanche also left open the possibility that the Justice Department could try to stop states from certifying election results.
The last “short-duration plan” is still going, just for the record.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has revealed that he was one of the lawmakers recently briefed on the Trump administration’s discussions about a possible post-election military strike on Iran. Administration officials told the lawmakers a renewed attack would be a “short-duration plan,” the same thing they said about the first one.
Murphy indicated that the plan involves targeting civilian infrastructure, though he declined to share specifics. Analysts have warned such attacks could prompt retaliatory strikes on American military facilities across the Gulf.
Murphy said the plan “will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.” He added that Trump personally directed officials to develop the war plan, and that what they came up with would be “devastating for our security interests.”
Several major outlets have reported that the Trump administration told Middle East allies to prepare for a short, intense military campaign in Iran after the midterms. According to CNN, the Pentagon’s leaders have been drawing up a target list that includes Iranian energy infrastructure, military sites, and nuclear facilities.
Eighty-one arrests is a lot for a medical practice that wasn’t selling opioids.
A former patient of Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican who practiced as an obstetrician-gynecologist for 25 years, filed a class-action lawsuit against him Thursday alleging he charged illegal interest rates on outstanding medical bills. Marshall’s former practice sued more than 700 patients for unpaid bills during his career, and at least 81 of them were arrested.
The suit, filed in Kansas state court, concerns the 18 percent interest rate Marshall and his former practice, Heartland OBGYN, routinely charged. Kansas law usually caps the interest rate businesses can seek in court at 15 percent, and the Kansas City Star found no other medical providers charging 18 percent after reviewing filings from about 150 practices.
In 2009, Marshall’s practice sued the lead plaintiff, Meischa Zimmerman, over a $3,596 debt from a C-section. She was arrested three times for failing to appear in court for the case, including once at her home while eight months pregnant with her 2-year-old daughter.
Marshall is in an unexpectedly competitive reelection battle in a state that hasn’t sent a Democratic senator to Washington since 1932. Recent polls have him tied with his Democratic challenger, Adam Hamilton, whose campaign has run an ad featuring Zimmerman describing her arrest.
“Nuke the whales” used to be satire.
The Trump administration is considering proposals for two giant underwater data centers off the U.S. coast, one in Alaska’s Cook Inlet and the other in the Gulf of Maine. Both sites are home to endangered whale populations, including about 300 beluga whales and fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales.
The data centers would create a constant low level of underwater noise from pumps and turbines, which researchers say would interfere with the whales’ ability to feed and communicate. In Cook Inlet, the belugas depend almost entirely on echolocation, because the water is so murky from glacial runoff it looks like chocolate milk.
The heat that the data centers would dump into the surrounding water is another threat to both populations. When waters warmed in the early 2010s, right whales left their Gulf of Maine feeding grounds, and the salmon that belugas eat in Cook Inlet can’t survive without cold water.
Communities near both proposed sites are already mobilizing against the projects. Eastport has put a moratorium on permits for industrial data centers, and the local Passamaquoddy tribe has refused to work with the developer. The comment period for the Cook Inlet proposal ends November 2.
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** Judge Strikes Down Trump Administration’s Medicaid Work Rules.** A federal judge in Boston ruled Thursday that the administration’s guidance requiring chronically ill Medicaid recipients to prove they are unable to work went beyond what Congress authorized in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Judge Richard Stearns, ruling in favor of a coalition of 25 Democratic-led states, wrote that enforcing the unlawful definition could lead to the disenrollment of vulnerable people who rely on Medicaid. The ruling also requires states to wait at least six months after the work rules take effect to cancel the health insurance of anyone claiming a medical exemption.
Harris County Grand Jury Indicts ICE Agent Who Hit Houston Immigrant With SUV. A Harris County grand jury has indicted Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Mario Alberto Morales on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after Morales drove his Jeep Grand Cherokee into construction worker Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, who has lived in Houston for more than three decades. Body camera footage showed Morales driving toward Parra Hernandez in a parking lot, hitting him, then stopping to ask in Spanish where his companion had gone. He is believed to be the first federal agent to be charged in Texas related to conduct connected to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement. Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare called it one of the clearest cases he’s seen.
** Dockworkers in Nearly 20 Countries Strike for Palestine.** Dockworkers staged a coordinated work stoppage on Friday, October 30 at 113 ports in 22 countries in what organizers say is the largest worker protest against war in history. The epicenter is the Mediterranean, where dockers in dozens of ports across Italy, Greece, France, Cyprus, the Basque Country, and Morocco refused to work part or all of the day. They were joined by dockworkers in Spain, Turkey, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, Mexico, and Oakland, California. The action was organized in solidarity with Palestine, following a tradition of direct action among dockworkers, including the 1984 San Francisco boycott of South African cargo during the fight against apartheid.
** FDA Approves First Drug for Rare and Fatal Brain Disease After 30 Years of Research.** The FDA has approved the first drug specifically for the treatment of Alexander disease, a rare neurological disorder that damages the nervous system and affects fewer than one in one million people. The drug is the culmination of more than 30 years of research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where scientists first identified the genetic mutation that causes the disease. Clinical trials have shown that patients treated with Zanvastro experienced stabilization of their motor function, and some patients have shown improvements in their ability to move. The approval is for patients from infancy to adulthood, and the drug is expected to be available in the United States in coming weeks.
