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About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

Sen. Darline Graham Considers Running for a Full-Term, Source Confirms

Newly minted Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) is considering running for her late brother’s old seat in the South Carolina special election, according to one person granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Graham was sworn in earlier this week to replace Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who died on Saturday. Her appointment, backed by President Donald Trump, was widely seen as a move to fill the seat with a caretaker who would leave Washington at the end of the term in January.

Graham’s interest in running for the seat was first reported by Semafor.

The filing window for candidates in the August 11 primary opens Tuesday. The field of candidates could include Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette; Reps. Russell Fry, Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman; businessman Mark Lynch; and former Gov. Mark Sanford, among others.

On Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) hinted that Graham could join their ranks. “Darline has so far been off to a remarkable start,” Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told CBS News. “Why not her?”

A spokesperson for Graham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The news of her interest in running for a full term came as a surprise to some prominent South Carolina Republicans. “My understanding is that she told Governor [Henry] McMaster that she would accept the appointment to fill the rest of the term, not to be a candidate for it,” said South Carolina Republican Party Chair Drew McKissick.

Cameron Arcand

Cameron Arcand 

10 Rejected Titles For Biden’s New Memoir

At long last, the wait is over — President Joe Biden has written a memoir about his time in the White House. The book, titled Promise Me, America, will be released this fall following the November midterm elections, but that wasn’t the only title that was pitched.

Here is an exclusive list of potential titles that were rejected:

1. If You Don’t Read This, You Ain’t Black: Close, but the marketing team wanted to cast a wider net.

2. My Time As, You Know, The Thing: All the trademark clarity of his presidency in one phrase.

3. Two Scoops of Mint Chocolate Chip, Waffle Cone, Please: Always ice cream with this guy.

4. Look, Fat: This option was ultimately discarded to avoid body shaming any potential readers.

5. The Last of the Dog-Faced Pony Soldiers: A tantalizing tease of the treasures found in the book.

6. My Life as a Chinese Asset: A little too raw and real-world.

7. Tales from a Truck Driving Lifeguard: This title was tossed after the fictional portion of the book was removed.

8. How We Finally Beat Medicare: An inspiring rallying cry everyone still hasn’t figured out.

9. If I Did It: His “hypothetical” confession to killing America, right there in black and white.

10. Truinnernationalundrepressure: Surprisingly, this is more legible than the rest of the memoir.

The Babylon Bee

Trump’s Speech Sends Beijing, And China-Watchers, Into A Frenzy

President Donald Trump’s explosive allegations against China Thursday night are already reverberating far beyond domestic politics.

Speaking from the White House on Thursday, Trump accused China of “the largest compromise of election data in history,” alleging Beijing illicitly obtained information from roughly 220 million American voter files during the 2020 election cycle. The Chinese Communist Party quickly denied the charges, while China-watchers in the United States questioned if the relationship between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been shattered.

“China has all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in others’ internal affairs,” Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Chang said in a statement. “The U.S. election is an internal matter of the U.S. Its outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.”

The spat could have implications for a reportedly sought-after summit between Trump and Xi later this year.

Among longtime China observers, Trump’s accusations immediately prompted questions about whether the administration’s broader China strategy can withstand the allegations. Bill Bishop, publisher of the influential Sinocism newsletter, questioned how the allegations could be reconciled with Trump’s stated interest in maintaining a working relationship with Xi.

“So how can he still be friends with Xi after what he says the PRC [People’s Republic of China] just did in stealing 220m voter files?” Bishop wrote on X. “If any of these allegations are true how can this not be a rupture?”

China hawk Gordon Chang, author of “Plan Red” and “China Is Going To War”, argued that Beijing’s leadership would be deeply unsettled by Trump’s decision to publicly release the intelligence. “China’s leaders are almost certainly in a panic right about now,” Chang wrote. “Bravo, President Trump, for revealing China’s massive interference in our elections and in our society.”

“Trump just showed China who’s boss.”

Not everyone accepted Trump’s characterization of the newly released intelligence. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, dismissed the allegations, arguing that publicly available voter registration data has long been accessible to foreign governments and private organizations alike. “The idea that somehow these countries are gathering voter files — these are publicly available. You don’t have to hack into them. You can buy them,” Warner said to CBS News.

Trump’s allegations also go further than previously declassified intelligence assessments produced during his first administration.

A January 2021 intelligence community assessment concluded that China “probably continued longstanding efforts to gather information on U.S. voters and public opinion” in order to better predict election outcomes and inform Beijing’s policy toward whichever administration ultimately took office. Another assessment, partially declassified in 2022, similarly found that Chinese intelligence officials analyzed voter registration data from multiple states during the 2020 election cycle.

Neither assessment concluded that China attempted to alter vote totals or directly manipulate election infrastructure.

Just one day before Trump’s announcement, a Pew Research Center survey found that China is now viewed more favorably than the United States in 25 of the 36 countries surveyed — the first time in the organization’s two decades of polling that Beijing has surpassed Washington in a majority of participating nations. That shift, researchers argued, reflects both China’s expanding diplomatic and economic influence abroad and declining international perceptions of the United States.

The Daily Wires ^ | July 17, 2026 | Drew Berkemeyer

Democrats Are Panicking and Scrambling to Hide Something Big

Matt Margolis 

Things just keep getting worse for the Democratic Party, and at this rate, they may need a new metaphor because “keeps getting worse” barely covers it anymore. We already told you the polls are tightening heading into the midterms in November, which was bad enough on its own. Now it turns out the party’s situation is so much worse than we already know, and the people running the show apparently don’t want you to know just how bad it really is.

In a bizarre move, the Democratic National Committee required its senior leadership to sign non-disclosure agreements before a private meeting on the party’s finances, according to two people familiar with the conversations who spoke to Axios. That alone is a break from past practice. DNC officers are high-ranking members of chair Ken Martin’s team, not entry-level staffers. Officers at that level don’t typically get handed a confidentiality agreement before they can hear how much money they have in their piggy bank and what they plan to do about it.

Make no mistake about it, you don’t slap NDAs on your own leadership team unless you’re worried about what might leak. And boy, it’s gotta be something really juicy.

The private senior officers’ meeting happened on June 25, five days before the Supreme Court issued a ruling that reshaped party fundraising rules. Martin has been fending off a crisis of confidence among Democrat donors, operatives, and even DNC members over how he’s managing the party, especially with the Republican National Committee sitting on a huge fundraising advantage without any debt.

And the numbers justify the panic. Through the end of May, the DNC had nearly $15 million on hand but $18 million in debt. The RNC, meanwhile, had $125 million on hand and zero debt. In other words, the Democrat Party is running on fumes, and they know it.

ICYMI: Democrats Got Some Devastating News About the Midterms

Martin has been privately and publicly defensive about all of this for months. In a contentious Pod Save America interview earlier this year, he insisted, “to suggest that we’re not raising money is inaccurate.” He also argued the real gap between the parties isn’t about how much money comes in, but how much goes out. Dizzy from the spin yet?

The Supreme Court ruling that landed five days after that closed-door meeting didn’t do Democrats any favors either. It lifted limits on how much parties can spend in coordination with candidates and allowed parties to buy campaign ads at the same discounted rate that individual campaigns pay. As we reported, that decision was widely seen as benefiting the GOP, as it effectively wiped out much of the fundraising edge Democratic candidates were counting on this fall.

The DNC declined to comment on the specific NDA requirement for its officers. Chris Lowe, the DNC’s national finance co-chair, waved off the whole thing as a non-issue, calling confidentiality agreements for officers and board-meeting attendees standard practice in the corporate world, even though they are not. Lowe also said senior DNC staff already operate under confidentiality agreements and argued it would be poor practice not to have them in place when finance and political strategy get discussed at the highest levels.

Mark Margolis, PJ Media

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday announced the imposition of visa restrictions in a bid to target violent, far-left terrorist groups.

The announcement coincided with an international summit in which Rubio met with representatives of dozens of nations and warned of growing far-left extremism. He further invoked international coalitions to stop the Islamic State as a model for them to emulate.

“Today, in support of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 and ongoing U.S. Government efforts to disrupt networks fomenting political violence before they escalate to criminal action, the Department of State is announcing a new visa restriction policy that targets members of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts of terrorism; supported violent criminal activity; participated in economic sabotage; financed, recruited, or provided logistical support for violent or criminal actions committed by Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups; and/or facilitated the convergence of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned networks for the purposes of violent action,” Rubio wrote in a statement.

Far-left extremism has been increasingly in the eye of the administration since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot during an open-air event at Utah Valley University in September 2025. His alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, was reportedly motivated by Kirk’s comments criticizing transgender ideology.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday announced the imposition of visa restrictions in a bid to target violent, far-left terrorist groups.

The announcement coincided with an international summit in which Rubio met with representatives of dozens of nations and warned of growing far-left extremism. He further invoked international coalitions to stop the Islamic State as a model for them to emulate.

“Today, in support of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 and ongoing U.S. Government efforts to disrupt networks fomenting political violence before they escalate to criminal action, the Department of State is announcing a new visa restriction policy that targets members of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts of terrorism; supported violent criminal activity; participated in economic sabotage; financed, recruited, or provided logistical support for violent or criminal actions committed by Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups; and/or facilitated the convergence of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned networks for the purposes of violent action,” Rubio wrote in a statement.

Far-left extremism has been increasingly in the eye of the administration since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot during an open-air event at Utah Valley University in September 2025. His alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, was reportedly motivated by Kirk’s comments criticizing transgender ideology.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday announced the imposition of visa restrictions in a bid to target violent, far-left terrorist groups.

The announcement coincided with an international summit in which Rubio met with representatives of dozens of nations and warned of growing far-left extremism. He further invoked international coalitions to stop the Islamic State as a model for them to emulate.

“Today, in support of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 and ongoing U.S. Government efforts to disrupt networks fomenting political violence before they escalate to criminal action, the Department of State is announcing a new visa restriction policy that targets members of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts of terrorism; supported violent criminal activity; participated in economic sabotage; financed, recruited, or provided logistical support for violent or criminal actions committed by Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups; and/or facilitated the convergence of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned networks for the purposes of violent action,” Rubio wrote in a statement.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday announced the imposition of visa restrictions in a bid to target violent, far-left terrorist groups.

The announcement coincided with an international summit in which Rubio met with representatives of dozens of nations and warned of growing far-left extremism. He further invoked international coalitions to stop the Islamic State as a model for them to emulate.

John Horvat, American Thinker

Plucky Village Declares Independence To Avoid Being Overrun By Male Migrants

A tiny village is taking a stand against its own government as it faces the threat of being overrun by migrants.

The couple hundred residents of Piddington, Oxfordshire, in the United Kingdom, voted July 4 for independence against the United Kingdom in a bid against authorities who are seeking to flood the area with illegal male migrants. The vote to separate passed in an overwhelming 96 percent majority.

At the heart of the problem for Piddington is the Home Office’s (the UK equivalent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) June 26 decision to relocate almost 4,000 migrants to three rural former military bases. One of those bases — the Ministry of Defense Bicester — sits directly next to Piddington and has a fence that runs alongside many locals’ homes, one resident told GB News. The site also borders a playground for children and families created by the parish council.

An estimated 1,250 single adult male asylum seekers aged 18 to 65 are expected to be relocated to the Bicester base next to Piddington. This is over four times the population of the entire village.

The relocation of migrants is part of the British Labour Party’s efforts to end the temporary housing of illegals in hotels as they await case processing. The hotel system has sparked huge controversy and has cost British taxpayers billions of pounds, while contributing to housing shortages.

The Home Office plans to use the Bicester camp for a minimum of 10 years, according to a government fact sheet. The government says it will appoint a “specialist provider of asylum accommodation” to manage the camp and will provide 24/7 on-site security through “a provider of security services” and “CCTV monitoring and recording.”

Locals have expressed fear, however, that the sudden and overwhelming flood of single male migrants into the area will make the village unsafe for women and children.

Piddington resident Tim McNally, who chairs the village’s Parish Council, said his neighbors are distraught.

“[The camp] will just turn the village into a ghost town. It’ll just destroy the spirit of the village, and that’s how people feel absolutely trapped, stressed, concerned,” McNally told the Daily Caller.

“I’ve had men — grown men — crying to me because they’ve got young daughters of an age that for the next 10 years they’ll be young ladies,” McNally added. “One guy who’s got an 18-year-old said, ‘I will not let her go out. I will not let her leave the house alone.’”

Piddington — a village of just 150 homes — has no police force of its own. “We have no crime in this area,” McNally said. “There’s no police. There’s no need. The community is very tight. It’s very well connected.”

“There’s a lot of young people coming into the village, young families evolving, growing here now,” McNally added. “And they are absolutely beside themselves to determine what on earth to do.”

“We don’t have anything to defend ourselves with,” McNally said, “It’s against the law for us to carry a knife or have a gun.”

The government information page on the project reports that asylum seekers will undergo “mandatory security checks” before they reach the camp by “linking their biometric data to immigration, security, and criminality databases.”

But, as McNally observed, foreign criminal databases are not readily accessible, much less after Britain’s exit from the European Union in 2020. “They don’t have access to anything.”

“Only 10 days or 15 days before [the announcement],” McNally added, “I was listening in to BBC Radio Four. And they were interviewing […] the Home Office — these are the people who basically are responsible for managing these asylum seekers — and they were asking, how do they age-verify the people coming in? And [the Home Office] admitted they have no means to verify the age of any of these people.”

“They have no documentation,” McNally told the Caller. “There’s no database they can utilize. There is nothing they can do to verify who these people are by age.”

“If you can’t verify by age, what database can you review to link anyone together anyway? You can’t,” McNally said. “[The Home Office is] using the words to try and make [the camp] sound less risky than it is.”

But the migrant camp poses more threats to Piddington than just safety. McNally —who lives just a 10-minute walk from the base’s front gate — told the Caller it will take a serious toll on the financial stability of his neighbors.

“The values of their houses are virtually just dumped,” McNally said. “Even if they wanted to leave, some of them would have to pay money back to the bank to get out of the village, because no one is going to want to own their property in this village with 1,250 men having the freedom to run around as they wish.”


Lucy Spence, The Daily Caller

Trump: US elections are riddled with foreign and domestic fraud

It’s telling that several major networks, knowing what the speech would report, refused to carry it. Plus, the speech ended (I thought) weakly.

President Trump spoke to the nation last night about serious problems with American elections. You could watch the speech live on Fox News, Newsmax, C-SPAN, and PBS. ABC, NBC, and CNN refused to air the speech on their live broadcasts, while CBS and MSNBC managed to air just a little bit before abandoning it to spout their own opinions (including what they laughably call “fact checks”).

That’s the state of America today. It was a good speech but ended (I thought) weakly.

Had the networks (some of which still have a free gig on the public airways) run the speech, the American people would have been exposed to shocking information about our elections, which are being controlled, not by We, the People, but by foreign governments (especially China) and inside operators, and are generally deeply corrupt and mismanaged. You can watch the speech here and read the transcript here, but these are the core points (which came after Trump did a mini State of the Union intro about how well the U.S. is doing in 2026).

One. Beginning around 2020, China illegally acquired around 220 million American voter files, learning who voters were, their party affiliations, and their voting patterns. China’s goal was to prevent Trump’s reelection. Trump also alluded to, but did not dive into, the fact that China may have printed ballots for Biden.

Hearing all that, my first thought was that I bet China is kicking itself for having interfered in the 2020 election. Had Trump been reelected, he would have been an utterly ineffectual lame duck.

China’s short-term 2020 election victory had an unexpected outcome: In 2024, Trump came back loaded for bear, wise to Washington’s ways, and with a cabinet equally passionate about his goals—including pushing back against China on every non-military front.

Two. Government intelligence operatives were fully aware of China’s massive election actions, but suppressed or downplayed the information about foreign interference in an American election. The burn bags that didn’t burn provide hard proof. Trump cited communications that had government operatives explicitly discuss withholding information from Trump about foreign election interference.

Three. Those of us who worried about electronic voting machines were right to worry. In many states, those machines are wide open to manipulation. He specifically cited the then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government as one that could, if it wished, affect vote outcomes by altering the machines.

Four. America’s voting rolls are filled with dead people and non-citizens. So far as we know, 278,000 non-citizens have registered in federal elections.

Five. Trump noted that mail-in voting is inherently corrupt and, as an example, cited California’s extremely suspicious 38-day vote count following its June 2 primaries. (Can you imagine waiting 38 days in November and December 2026 and, especially, 2028, for California to count its votes?)

Six. Election officials and agencies know about many of these problems, but routinely fail either to disclose or address them. One of the many failures is that states are not sharing voting rolls to identify people who, because of relocations, are registered in two or more states.

This was all important information that major networks, in the spirit of suppression, continued to suppress by refusing to air President Trump’s speech.

As for me, I was disappointed in how the speech ended. I believe that the Guaranty Clause of the U.S. Constitution requires emergency federal action when it’s proven that our election system is corrupted to the point at which our votes have become meaningless. That clause, which is founded in Article IV, Section 4, and applies generally to the whole of government, states that:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

A “Republican Form of Government” is one that derives its authority from the people, reflecting their will through their votes. We now know that, thanks to massive foreign and domestic interference, our will is not being reflected through our votes.

I wanted Trump to issue an emergency executive order addressing at least some of these concerns. He didn’t. He did tell everyone that all the statements he made are supported by facts, and that all those facts can be found here. He also said that his government notified various state agencies about problems with their systems.

Finally, Trump urged people to get in contact with their representatives (people he’d just proven may not, in fact, be the People’s duly elected representatives) to urge them to pass the SAVE America Act. That’s weak sauce considering that he just identified a massive, unconstitutional emergency situation in America, with foreign election interference and officials in both states and the federal government covering up foreign interference and conniving to corrupt the process from within.

EXPLOSIVE: Massive Election Corruption Report Details 824 Findings Across 800 Pages of Search Warrants and Investigative Documents

A newly released 799-page report titled “An Attack Upon U.S Critical Infrastructure” details the 2020 election corruption and beyond.

It provides a list of 18 prioritized and recommended election investigations, along with 8 search warrants. Entities named include Runbeck Election Services, Elections Group LLC, The Office of Georgia SOS, Tyler Technologies, Associated Press, and many others.

All assertions in the report are drawn from forensic analyses, sworn legislative testimony, court filings, IG investigations, vendor invoices, open-source intelligence, government communications obtained through litigation and FOIA, and more.

The Full Report contains 9 sections. This is followed by “Appendix A,” which provides the detailed findings and sources. Also available is the shorter 10-page Executive Summary.

TGP reported on the Library of Evidence used for this report, which proves President Trump’s assertions that our elections can be stolen.

This new report documents 824 findings bearing directly on the security of the 2020 election. It covers the effects on 12 U.S. States and the activity from nine nations.

Of these findings, 553 are established facts, 155 are disputed facts, and 116 are reasonable, analytically supported inferences.

Patrick Colbeck, primary author and COO of the Election Crime Bureau, said: “The report is proof that the narrative ‘there is no evidence of election fraud’ is itself a deliberate fraud, as the report demonstrates.”

In other words, anyone who claims there is no evidence of 2020 election malfeasance is just not a credible person.

This report is organized by ten converging vectors, proving that malfeasance occurs in almost every aspect of our election system. In January 2017, our elections were deemed “critical infrastructure”.

They are one of the 16 sectors whose physical and virtual assets are so vital to the Nation that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on national security, economic security, public health, and safety.

Mr. Colbeck stated: “The report has been shared with numerous DOJ and elected officials.”

TGP confirmed that detailed presentations were given to at least one Congressman, along with key election integrity groups.

According to Colbeck, the report has had “near-zero mainstream media coverage” even though it’s the most extensive election report ever produced.

Here’s an example from page 72:

3.2.5 – Remote Access Findings. Live absentee ballot processing was remotely taken over. The Election Management System was left on the internet during the count. On October 23, 2020, a Fulton County poll worker reported that the computers for absentee ballot processing had been remotely accessed. The remote party was in control and deleted data. In emails, the incident was documented by the Chief Investigator of the GA SOS Investigations Division, but no criminal referral followed.

These 799 pages are the foundation to justify rapid federal and state investigations. They also supply an evidentiary basis for identifying, prosecuting, and deterring anyone responsible.

Our failure to respond to these election manipulations and attacks invites repetition and jeopardizes our constitutional government.

The report highlights dozens of “Key Takeaways”, and other important “Observations”. We list several below.

KEY TAKEAWAY (Components)

“The machines contained Chinese components. The data center ran on Huawei. The code was maintained in Serbia. The poll worker files lived on a server in Beijing. The CIA analysts declined to report Chinese interference in writing, on the record, for political reasons. Iran was charged. The E.O. 13848 sanctions trigger was never pulled. By every measurable layer of the system, a foreign adversary had a path in. And the intelligence architecture built to close that path was deliberately left open.”

KEY TAKEAWAY (Certification)

Certification was not a checkpoint – it was a closing mechanism. In every decisive battleground state, officials certified results over missing records, statutory violations, mathematical impossibilities, and canvassers operating under duress. The last institutional brake on a defective election was never applied; it was bypassed, coerced, or falsified out of the way.

KEY TAKEAWAY (Challenges)

“They didn’t need to rig the count. They needed the pre-election challenge to be too early, the post-election challenge to be too late, the discovery request to be denied, the forensic sample to be too small, the protocol order to never arrive, and the attorney who kept filing to lose her license. By the time the public was told the courts found no evidence, the courts had made certain they never would.”

Section 2.3 discusses the 64 lawsuits. Plaintiffs couldn’t get records from government agencies or NGO’s. Judges evaluated evidence without ordering discovery, often because they found initial evidence (affidavits, expert reports) to be speculative or inadmissible hearsay. Judges just didn’t want election cases in their courtrooms.

Disposition of 64 lawsuits claiming election malfeasance.

REMOTE ACCESS

The Federal Government contracted with an NGO called the “Center For Internet Security” to secure our electronic voting systems – while we are told they are not connected to the Internet.

NGO FUNDING

“Private money selected the jurisdictions. Private operatives ran the operations. Private attorneys defended the officials. Private NGOs built the voter lists. By 2020, elections in key cities weren’t administered by the government — they were administered by a privately funded network that answered to its donors.”

RECORD DESTRUCTION

“Without the adjudication logs, you can’t know who changed the votes. Without the ballot images, you can’t verify the count. Without the EMS database, you can’t trace the chain of custody. Without the drop box videos, you can’t confirm the deliveries. Each record destroyed was a question that can never be answered. That may have been exactly the point.”

PRIVILEGED ACCESS

“In Michigan, only vendors could inspect the machines. In Wisconsin, only private operatives controlled the ballot room. In Georgia, only NGO volunteers had untrained access to the voter registration system. Across 2020, the people with the most access to your election were the people with the least accountability to you.”

As extensive as this list of findings may be, not all were released. Whistleblowers and other investigators are encouraged to share their findings with TGP or the Election Crime Bureau at nexus@electioncrimebureau.com.

Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit

Trump to Deliver Primetime Address on Elections

The Epoch Times)—With midterms just months away, President Donald Trump is poised to speak to the nation about elections.

Trump is scheduled to address the nation on the subject on July 16 at 9 p.m. ET.

Although he has held off on offering details, Trump confirmed to reporters on July 14 that his address will concern voter integrity and related issues.

“Our country has to shape up,” the president said in the Oval Office during an appearance with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaid. “Without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that same day that he did not know what Trump intends to address on July 16.

“We are focused on the 2026 election,” he said.

Election Integrity Efforts Trump’s address comes amid wider efforts from the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to bolster the integrity of federal elections.

Earlier in July, the president fired members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, which assists election officials and manages the certification of voting systems, including electronic voting machines.

Trump has also issued executive orders on election integrity that have faced setbacks in the courts.

Blue states have sued the Trump administration over its effort to create a nationwide list of eligible voters. On June 25, a district court judge in Massachusetts sided with them, ruling that states maintain significant control over elections under the Constitution.

In Washington on June 26, a district court judge blocked the administration’s updated citizenship verification database, ruling that it ran afoul of the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act of 1974.

On July 7, a Georgia district court judge quashed subpoenas from the Justice Department seeking information about election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, in 2020.

Also in July, Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, sent letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, cautioning officials that they may be criminally liable if noncitizens are on their voter rolls.

SAVE America Struggles The president has also repeatedly called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. That GOP-backed legislation would require proof of citizenship for voter registration and photo identification at the polls.

Although SAVE America has passed the House, it has stalled in the Senate.

Republican leaders are seeking to incorporate SAVE America-like policies into a third reconciliation bill.

Budget reconciliation would bypass the Senate filibuster, enabling Republicans to pass legislation with a simple majority. Yet, some election integrity measures could run afoul of the Senate parliamentarian, who advises on what legislation can be passed via reconciliation.

The parliamentarian previously advised that SAVE America provisions do not comply with the Byrd Rule, a constraint on what can make it into the budget reconciliation process.

House Republicans on July 15 released a $95 billion framework for the third reconciliation package that could include funding for states to establish photo ID requirements during elections.

The House Budget Committee announced there will be a July 16 markup on the legislation. Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) pledged the package would help “safeguard the integrity of our elections.”

Democratic lawmakers voiced worries about the president’s upcoming speech.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told The Epoch Times on July 15 that “having been deeply involved with the intelligence community for the last decade plus, I would be shocked if there was some major new piece of intelligence that never was shared.”

“I’ve been concerned since the beginning of the year that there’ll be efforts to try to rig the elections or take a suspect or false piece of intelligence and use it as a reason to take some kind of action.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) expressed similar concerns about the speech’s implications for the White House’s approach to the midterms, telling reporters on July 15 that he and his colleagues “are red-teaming what they might do and how we can combat it ahead of time.”

Stacy Robinson contributed to this report.

TRIBUNE: The Failure of Leo XIV

InfoVaticana ^ | July 6, 2026 | Pedro Gómez Carrizo

There was a time when excommunication could bring an emperor to his knees or cause an entire nation to apostatize. But excommunication is no longer what it once was, and that is the work of the very Church that today wields it against the FSSPX. History knows these diminished echoes, those tragedies that repeat themselves as farces, as Marx described when he identified Napoleon III as a ridiculous imitation of his uncle. Nor is Leo XIV Gregory VII. 

But if farce is already a fairly appropriate term to describe this case, with Tucho Fernández, carrying all his record of absurdities, leading the excommunication, we have an even more fitting term for it. It was given to us by the great Valle-Inclán, and as you may have guessed, the term is esperpento. With the aforementioned cardinal, and with the brand-new pontiff who backs him, Canon Law has gone for a stroll down Callejón del Gato. Yes, there we have the guardian (sic) of the Doctrine of the Faith turned into a grotesque distortion of his own office. The image of the censor of Écône appears at the bottom of the glass, brandishing the Code, after having turned doctrine into something viscous, adaptable, sentimental, contextual, liquid… Such a scarecrow dressed in purple would have delighted Valle-Inclán, who would have known how to make the most of the theatrical effect of that excommunication. 

Taking oneself so tragically seriously when one has long since lost all composure provokes an emotion composed of several ingredients, among them astonishment and laughter, even second-hand embarrassment, but certainly not reverential fear. That such a figure should promote an excommunication in the name of the purity of ecclesial communion is simply the height of it all. It is the height of it because one of the aspects that most separates the excommunicated from the excommunicators is that the former denounce, precisely, the extent to which the latter have emptied their acts of meaning.

Doctrine is little more than the report of a working group, always dependent on context; morality has dissolved into that mercy without judgment that accompanies the sinner while trying not to inconvenience him; the liturgy has for decades suffered from parochial creativity; Germany has for years been rehearsing schism in installments, and the Communist Party of China has been ordaining bishops; the Curia appoints cardinals to serve under religious prefects, while homosexual couples are blessed as long as they do not pray in Latin; pastoral care no longer means leading souls toward the truth, but rather sugar-coating that pill until it is completely hidden, and synodality has managed to make old heresies re-emerge, shiny and fresh out of a brainstorming session. It is no surprise that with such an emptying-out, the Doctrine of the Faith has ended up in the hands of a cardinal who, without shame, disputes Ratzinger while flirting with contextual theology. 

Yes, for this prefect, backed by the new Pope, ecclesial acts are nothing more than noise. So too is excommunication, despite being the Church’s gravest penalty, for even the most serious weapons become ridiculous when wielded by someone who has turned his own authority into a matter of opinion. How can Rome expect its excommunication to be taken seriously after having spent decades demonstrating that everything, or almost everything, could be nuanced, contextualized, negotiated, tolerated, reinterpreted, or blessed with a footnote? It is Rome itself that has devalued for decades the language with which it now seeks to judge. It should not be surprised that its liquid theology fails to impress. Or is not everyone good, excommunicated or not?

That Rome which disorders its own signs of governance and then expects its penal order to sound terrifying has earned, by its own efforts, that its most solemn gesture may sound, in too many Catholic ears, like the night-watchman’s whistle. They have no right to complain.

Max Weber would have understood the scene instantly: no authority lives on command alone. Rome retains all its power, but it has squandered a great part of the credit of its authority. And that is not easily recovered. It is gained through coherence, proportion, justice, and fidelity to the deposit of faith… And not even the first step has been taken! When one is sunk, what one must do is stop digging, and the digger Fernández never lets go of the shovel. His excommunication fails twice: juridically, because with a Note it attempts to project onto priests, faithful, and adherents the schismatic condition that can only be declared by means of a penal Decree; politically, because it fires from an authority that has for years been wetting its own gunpowder.

Thus, the sentence dissolves into the voluntarism of one who takes as juridical reality what he barely manages to formulate as a threat. Víctor Manuel Fernández has achieved the feat of turning the Church’s gravest penalty into an esperpento of canonical technique and a public confession of impotence.

And with that impotence he also reveals his weakness. Carl Schmitt would surely have smiled at Rome’s action, considering how much it laid bare the seams. Whoever administers the exception points out where he recognizes the danger, and while Rome has created exceptions left and right for what is most inadmissible, it has placed before Écône an impassable boundary. That “selectivity of the exception” betrays the shortcomings of authority: with Germany everything is process; with Écône, an absolute limit.

The post-conciliar Church has finally discovered that Hell is not empty, but it only sees there the followers of Lefebvre. These children are the only ones given a stone when they ask for bread. There is no better way to confess that the problem is not disobedience, but the direction in which one disobeys.

Leo XIV’s inability to manage that disobedience has made me think, by contrast, of the king in The Little Prince. Saint-Exupéry granted this character a prudence that Prevost has not shown. That monarch waited for sunset to order the sun to set. He knew an elementary truth of governance: an order that is born defeated does not ennoble the sovereign, it exposes him, and Leo XIV has inaugurated his pontificate with that exposure. The first great scene of his reign has been the solemn administration of a fracture.

Wishing to appear as guarantor of communion, Prevost has been portrayed as heir to a squandered authority. He received a Rome accustomed to tolerating the intolerable, and after entrusting the delicate task to the man who symbolizes the worst doctrinal drift, he chose to respond to Écône with the severest gesture when his own word had already been publicly ignored. Without restoring order, he has recorded that he had failed to impose it. 

If the signature is Tucho’s, the failure is Leo XIV’s.

“We want the faith of the Church in order to remain in the Church. And we want the Church for the faith and in the faith,” Pagliarani has said, and it is something that not even the Pope who excommunicates them calls into question. Écône speaks of preserving, receiving, transmitting; it speaks of priests who celebrate the Mass, preach the faith, and administer the sacraments as the Church received them. And to all this Rome responds with its power of governance.

Showing the muscle of power is easy, but it does not seem the best way to recover authority. Because what is no longer so easily achieved is convincing others that the FSSPX’s concern arose from an intolerable indiscipline and not from a genuine and holy necessity, attended to for the Glory of God, for the good of souls, and for the sanctification of its members and followers, now excommunicated or clumsily threatened with excommunication.

Too many Catholics have suffered the remnants of its fire to accept without further ado that the refugees are the arsonists. Let us hope in Christ for the Pope’s blessing upon his sons of the Fraternity.