In this interview Graham Platner responds to his detractors accusations against him. He discusses the tattoo and the Jewish times report that says he had talked about it while working at a bar during the time frame he was not working there. So there is not any credible evidence that he knew what the tattoo was. As he said why would he have danced with it in full display to his extended Jewish family? He makes sense. He understands that people may not like him because he is not polished as a politician. He also says he stumbles verbally and struggles to correct and improve himself. It was a hard hitting interview and Platner came off as very reasonable. Hugs
Now, in this must-watch interview, Mehdi Hasan speaks to Platner not just about his vision for a progressive “political revolution” in Washington DC but also about some of his controversies, including his social media and his tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol.
“This person is already thinking bigger, writing, ‘If this succeeds the people can band together to buy even more companies that get intentionally bankrupt by private equity and we can start bringing back consumer friendly practices or seizing the means of production maybe.’”
“Get in losers, we’re going to buy an airline” is the short bio next to the smiling face of Hunter Peterson, an aviation enthusiast making waves as he tries to disrupt the air travel industry. On Saturday, May 2, at 3 a.m., Spirit Airlines abruptly shuttered, leaving thousands of employees out of work and thousands of travelers holding unusable tickets.
There was no notice or warning. One day, people were booking tickets, and the next, the budget airline went dark. The airline made air travel affordable to a subset of people who otherwise couldn’t afford it.
The FAA and other airlines scrambled to offer solutions for those booked with the budget airline. While Spirit is offering refunds, the loss of a budget airline giant will be felt. Peterson decided to go further by doing something unheard of in the airline industry–crowdsource to buy an airline.
The idea behind crowdsourcing funds is to make the airline people-owned. This means there would be no corporation backing the airline. No overpaid CEO, and no large shareholder who gets to decide the fate of the company. Peterson calls it Spirit 2.0, and much to his surprise, an astonishingly large number of people were interested.
What started as a zany idea quickly turned into an unexpected movement. Peterson set up a website where interested people could pledge money starting at $45–the average price of a Spirit ticket. The potential CEO wanted to keep the price point within reach. None of the money has left anyone’s accounts. Their pledge acts as a placeholder for future funds, but the clock is ticking.
It may sound like an elaborate joke or scheme to go viral, but Peterson is doing the work. Not only has he met with the Spirit Flight Attendants’ Union, but he’s also spoken with attorneys. In videos shared on Instagram, he explains the importance of doing the legal footwork before money leaves people’s accounts.
“I just got off two calls,” Peterson says. “One, with one of the largest law firms in the world that specializes in mergers and acquisitions, aviation distress assets, and debt, and they basically said, this is doable. We can do this. I also got off a call with someone that represents high-net-worth individuals who may be interested in basically giving us some money to just burn to figure out the legalities of this.”
Peterson explains that in less than a week, they’ll be auctioning the operation certificate for Spirit. This means that if this lofty goal is going to be reached, potential small-donor investors need to reach the astronomical $1.75 billion total. Yes, billion.
Before giving the brief update, Peterson’s site letsbuyspiritair.com had already raised over $24 million. The total continues to climb rapidly, with people pledging amounts anywhere from $45 to $850. Since the website popped up, the total pledged has reached $437 million, and it’s restoring hope in people trying to make this proposed people-owned airline a reality.
“ITS ACTUALLY HAPPENING WE CAN DO THIS,” one person screams.
“Is this feeling I have…. hope? It’s been so long since I’ve felt it lol,” another says.
This person is already thinking bigger, writing, “If this succeeds the people can band together to buy even more companies that get intentionally bankrupt by private equity and we can start bringing back consumer friendly practices or seizing the means of production maybe.”
Someone else shares, “This Spirit Airlines 2.0 project is giving me hope for America. I know there are more important fish to fry when it comes to issues in America. But if we are successful with this, imagine all the other issues we can address (e.g. healthcare, reparations, homelessness, etc.) using this framework. Like truly power to the people.”
A week before the US went to war with Iran, Pete Hegseth, the war secretary, invited the head of his church to lead prayers at the Pentagon. From his pulpit in Idaho, Doug Wilson, a 72-year-old ultraconservative pastor, preaches that homosexuality is a sin, women who dress immodestly are “sluts”, and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the “silliest thing in the world”.
Despite Hegseth’s evangelising, Wilson says the Trump administration is far from morally pure. He says the president is “not someone I would call a godly Christian man”, and disagrees with Trump’s appointment of a gay man, Scott Bessent, as his Treasury secretary because homosexuality is not just a sin, it is “a bad one”.
Of all his gripes, however, Wilson is most indignant about the 1960s sexual revolution, a moral catastrophe that he condemns frequently in his blog posts, sermons and books. He thinks women should dress modestly. But what is modest dress? “Not what they’re doing now,” he says. “I could pick on yoga pants.” He continues: “Men know what they think of hookers, which is not very much. When you’re just giving it away to every slob on the bus who wants to look, you’re degrading the currency.”
Does that mean Wilson and his followers sympathise with the dress codes enforced by Shia clerics in Iran? “No, because wrapping them up in a bedsheet is another way of degrading them. It is possible to be modest and attractive — attractive without attracting. Bundling them up the way really conservative Muslims do is a different kind of degradation. Like you’re not a person. But for a woman to dress like a slut is a different kind of degradation. Both kinds of degradation play off of each other.”
Wilson appeared here last month when he called for criminalizing homosexuality and outlawing all LGBTQ events.
In March, Wilson declared that under his Christian nationalist theocracy, all non-Protestant public events – such a Catholic parades that venerate the Virgin Mary – would be banned.
Also in March, a separate pastor at Hegseth’s church prayed for God to kill Senate candidate James Talarico.
Pete Hegseth’s pastor: ‘Women who dress immodestly are sluts’
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued the New York Times for discriminating against a white, male employee who claims to have been denied a promotion based on his demographic attributes. It marks the third lawsuit President Trump or his administration has filed against the Times in less than five years.
The Times also filed its own lawsuit against the Defense Department last year over its restrictions on journalists. A federal judge ruled in the outlet’s favor in March. The EEOC said Tuesday that the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges the Times violated the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.
The federal agency, which sits under the executive branch, pointed to the lack of promotion for a “well-qualified white male employee” along with the Times’ diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and a 2021 “Call to Action” to increase non-white and female representation in its leadership. “Federal law is clear: making hiring or promotion decisions motivated in whole or in part by race or sex violates federal law. There is no diversity exception to this rule,” EEOC chair Andrea Lucas said in a statement.
People at the paper say the claim is absurd. “I’m sorry, there are plenty of white guys at the top of the New York Times. Not really something that’s holding you back,” said the reporter. To name one prominent example, Joe Kahn, the paper’s executive editor, is a white male, as are many members of the masthead.
Rhoades Ha, the Times spokesperson, said, “The allegation centers on a single personnel decision for one of over 100 deputy positions across the newsroom, yet the EEOC’s filing makes sweeping claims that ignore the facts to fit a predetermined narrative.”
The employee originally filed the complaint in July 2025 with the EEOC office in New York. One staffer noted it could now be impossible for the Times to take action against the complainant: “This person now has job security for good after this suit. What a mess.”
Purely by coincidence, yeah, last week the NYT reported on the “deeply demoralized” work culture at the EEOC.
EEOC chief Andrea Lucas last appeared here when a judge ruled that she can have the names of Jewish employees at the University of Pennsylvania.
She appeared here in January 2026 when she ended federal guidelines against anti-LGBTQ workplace harassment.
In December 2025, Lucas appeared here when she posted a video seeking plaintiffs in lawsuits for anti-white male workplace discrimination.
A white male New York Times employee filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that the paper discriminated against him by not giving him a promotion because he is a white male.
Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed surprise to see the Vatican publishing the testimonies of married gay men.
Some of the hundreds of LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families who joined a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome, celebrating a new level of acceptance in the Catholic Church and crediting Pope Francis for the change, walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The Vatican released a report on Tuesday (May 5) that included the testimony of two married gay Catholics and acknowledged the church’s role in “the solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families.” The report also reflects on the negative impacts of conversion therapy, or “the devastating effects of reparative therapies aimed at recovering heterosexuality.”
“ It’s a big deal because they included testimonies and published testimonies from two LGBTQ people, both of them married, which is also unusual for the Vatican to do,” said the Rev. James Martin, a founder of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic ministry. “As far as I know, it’s the first time that in any official publication of the Vatican, they’ve included witnesses and testimonies and stories from LGBTQ Catholics in any kind of detailed way.”
The report comes from a group of theologians, including bishops, priests, a sister and a layperson, convened by the Vatican to study “controversial” issues raised by the Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis’ signature listening initiative, to which Martin was a delegate. Though church reform advocates hoped — and traditionalists feared — that the synod would bring major changes to church teaching around gender and sexuality, the decision to relegate contentious issues, such as LGBTQ+ inclusion, to study groups instead of general discussion was widely seen as a damper.
As expected, the synod study group report does not announce major changes to church doctrine, but it does suggest that the Catholic Church address the impasse between “doctrinal firmness” and “pastoral welcome” by listening and using a transdisciplinary approach, such as incorporating insights from psychology, alongside the Bible and church doctrine.
“ It’s a really good — I would even say historic — document,” said Yunuen Trujillo, a lesbian lay minister from Los Angeles. “ It’s still calling for all Catholics to engage in a process of discernment that is respectful of people’s lived experiences.”
Trujillo, author of “LGBTQ Catholics: A Guide to Inclusive Ministry,” said it might take a while for LGBTQ+ Catholics in the pews to feel the impact and noted that the document only focuses on lesbians, gays and bisexual people. “But I do believe it would be a positive impact, not a negative one,” she said.
In this Oct. 4, 2023, file photo, Pope Francis, far right, participates in the opening session of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Marianne Duddy-Burke, a married lesbian Catholic and DignityUSA’s executive director, said, “ The most significant thing for me was the recognition that top-down trying to dictate behavior and morality on the basis of dogma isn’t working,” adding she was “hopeful” to see the report using the language of a “paradigm shift.”
The “paradigm shift” the report proposes is a move away from applying abstract theological principles to on-the-ground realities and instead seeing theory and practice as a “virtuous cycle.” For the two to effectively inform each other, the report argues, requires a focus on relationships, transparency and learning. The document offers this theological framework not just for LGBTQ+ issues but for broader use, including in nonviolent activism and protest.
This synod document was written by the study group, not the pope, but its release to the public would have required his authorization.
The report’s release garnered some blowback, a portion of which fell on Pope Leo XIV. Far-right Catholic news organization LifeSite published a story on the report, raising concerns that the report was questioning “the sinful nature of homosexuality” and leaving unresolved the “debate on same-sex ‘marriage.’” Co-founder John-Henry Westen released a video warning that the report’s pro-LGBTQ+ stance makes clear the meaning of “synodality” under Leo.
Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed surprise to see the Vatican publishing the testimonies of married gay men.
“ I was expecting a rather bland report. And this was not that,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which serves LGBTQ Catholics. “ In days gone by in the church, they would try to tick off the token box by getting someone who had certain traits and characteristics, but who was just not critical of the church in any way.”
Martin said this is the first time he remembers seeing conversion therapy “critiqued that strongly” in a Vatican document. “There have been certain bishops who have been very muted in their critique of conversion therapy, but then there have also been bishops who have used organizations whose techniques really verge on conversion therapy,” he said.
One gay Catholic wrote of “wounds from the Christian community” in his Vatican-released testimony. “I cannot ignore the scars I carry. I have witnessed the devastating effects of ‘conversion therapies’ and the break-up of families, which felt like an attack on God’s sensitive and blameless creation. These experiences deeply hurt, because they target the inherent dignity of a person who simply bears the love of another of the same gender.”
But the married Portuguese man also wrote of his deep faith in the Eucharist and his sharing “a life of faith, service, and love” with his husband. “I live my life in profound peace with God, who knows me from my mother’s womb.”
“I feel the Church needs to move beyond mere ‘welcoming’ and ‘pity,’” he wrote in the testimony. “We need to proclaim the unspoken truth: God loves you and desires your wholeness. Sexuality is one part of our life, and difference is a hallmark of Creation.”
DeBernardo said the testimonies of LGBTQ+ people and their advocates have also been moving for the 17 bishops who have participated in three different meetings with New Ways Ministry in recent years. “We had a bishop at the end of the meeting in tears because he was so regretful of the way he had thought about LGBTQ people,” DeBernardo said.
“Dialogue really is the first step,” said DeBernardo. “ The genius of Pope Francis is that he realized that people had to start talking with one another, and learning about each other and not having the fear and the stereotypes.”
For Duddy-Burke, who represents a grassroots group led by LGBTQ+ Catholics that was banned 40 years ago from meeting in Catholic spaces — and who said she has struggled for years as a result to even have these conversations — the document inspires hope: “We didn’t have a place at the table and, and this document says that it’s time that we did,” she said.
At the same time, Duddy-Burke worries about whether those who hold the power will continue to dialogue and be willing to have their “minds and hearts changed.”
“And how will that be managed in parts of the world where it’s absolutely unsafe and it’s sometimes illegal, you know, for people to come forward as queer?” she asked.
The synod report also addresses “active nonviolence,” highlighting the examples of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Filipino “People Power” and Polish “Solidarity” anti-government movements, as well as the experience of a Catholic Serbian conscientious objector. Peace has been a major focus of Leo’s pontificate, and his recent anti-war statements have led to conflict with the Trump administration, which has used theological language to promote its war in the Middle East.
In the Vatican report, the theologians suggest that “just war theory,” which Catholic U.S. Vice President JD Vance has referenced to defend the war, is “inadequate” in the modern context. “Since war can no longer be confined to military targets but overflows into civilian life, taking on new forms (hybrid, asymmetrical, etc.), the recourse to frameworks used in the past for legitimate defence — and even more so for ‘just war’ — appears increasingly inadequate,” they write.
On Tuesday, the Vatican also released the report of another Synod study group dedicated to bishop selection and other bishop issues. That report proposed broad consultation — including the perspectives of lay people, in addition to clergy and religious — when it comes to potential bishop candidates as well as ideal future bishop qualities.
I have appointments throughout today, so I’ve set up a few things to read. This one is interesting in that it ties several things together to show us how not only our government but our companies are selling us into thinking we might actually get some fair treatment. It piqued my interest because of the strike last week; it seems “brands” are trying to work against being seen as part of those needing to understand what we the people don’t like how things are and that we expect change. Resist-
Red Lobster wants your attention. You can tell, because their current ads deploy not one but two separate announcers. There’s the expository guy. He’s a little pushy but at least he sticks to the facts. And then there’s the loud guy. He’s got a deep voice. He sounds like he’s broadcasting live from the submerged city of Atlantis. He says it with feeling, and also reverb.
“Because you’ve been asking… a lot… and we made it happen.”
So claims the not-from-Atlantis announcer. But what’s he talking about? We have been asking for many things. To be able to afford homes, for example, or not to have war crimes committed in our names, or to have our planet still exist twenty years from now.
Oh, this is about shrimp. Endless shrimp. It’s back, or so I’m told, in multiple forms. Every time the less pushy guy shares one of the currently available shrimp offerings, his partner pipes up with a complementary point straight from the bottom of the sea.
“Walt’s favorite shrimp.”
“ ENDLESS!”
“Garlic shrimp scampi”
“ENDLESS”
“Shrimp linguini alfredo”
“ENDLESS?”
“And all new marry me shrimp”
“ALL ENDLESS!”
The duo isn’t wrong. Endless shrimp is back. While the previous iteration didn’t technically bankrupt the chain (the real culprit was private equity and real estate chicanery) it was, by all accounts, an absolute mess. American consumers, who rightfully identified that they were getting ripped off in every facet of their lives, leapt at the opportunity to get one over at least one big business.
Back when Endless Shrimp was a permanent feature, shrimp hoarders would occupy tables for hours at a time, not leaving until they beat the house. The real victim of this behavior was, of course, the chain’s underpaid servers (if you walk into a restaurant with “me against these suckers” mindset, you’re less likely to view your waiter as a fellow victim of capitalism and you’re definitely not going to tip well). For the C-Suite, though, the larger concern wasn’t the dignity of their employees. It was a jumbo-sized hole in their bottom line.
It’s like The Boss once sang. Endless shrimp dies baby, that’s a fact. But maybe the endless shrimp that dies, some days comes back. Put your make-up on, do your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight at the only Red Lobster still open in your city.
I’m not all that interested in the relative success or failure of chain restaurant promotions, but I do care about the various ways corporations try to win our affection (meaningful cultural signifiers, or so I’d argue). And contra the two announcer voices, the most interesting thing about Red Lobster’s promotion isn’t the shellfish, either of the Walt’s Favorite or Marry Me varieties. It’s what’s whispered rather than shouted.
You see, the biggest difference between the current iteration of Endless Shrimp and its unprofitable predecessor is that now Red Lobster wants you to know that you (the shrimp-loving consumer) and they (the company) are in this together.
If you want the full story, I highly recommend this piece by Luke Winkie in Slate, but here’s the truncated version. There are varieties of shrimp on the Red Lobster menu that aren’t officially part of the promotion. They’re on the menu, but excluded from the benevolent blanket of endlessness. But if a customer were to ask for unlimited quantities of a non-official item (for example, Crispy Dragon Shrimp, a food item that I’m assured contains no actual dragon), the server is to welcome them into a cool secret. Their official, handbook-mandated line? “These items aren’t on the menu for this promotion, but I would be happy to make an exception for you.”
It’s like they say, “the exception is the rule.” Except literally, and by mandate. Servers are required by corporate policy to act like you and they are cheating the system, in hopes that when you remember the night you rode the dragon (shrimp), you remember it not as a conspiracy-of-one, but a sneaky secret between you and your best friend (Red Lobster restaurants, a subsidiary of the Thai Union Seafood Company).
This is not a new psychological trick. It’s a classic low stakes confidence game. The most effective way to a mark is to convince them that they are, in fact, in on the con themselves. It’s the same move that car salesmen use when they leave the room to “talk to their manager” before returning with a report that “he didn’t want me to give you this deal, but…”
It’s still striking, though, to see the strategy laid out in grandiose internal strategy documents. A beleaguered but iconic American brand name, flailing for its survival, hedges its survival on two bets. First, that you are tired, angry and aware that you’re on the wrong side of a rigged game (correct). And second, that, by offering you a facsimile of camaraderie and a very real pile of seafood, that they can win your loyalty (huh).
“[This is] about more than just shrimp,” the document proclaims. An absolute work of art, that sentence.
“[It’s] about creating an experience that says, ‘We listen to you.”
“When guests see Endless Shrimp back on the menu, they feel heard and valued.”
I have never addressed a sit-down chain’s internal strategy document, but I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say, tears in my eyes: Red Lobster, thank you. THIS is what democracy looks like.
As Eli Zeger argued in his 2020 essay about companies that talk like snarky teens on social media, this particular iteration of the “brand as friend” canard is the product of the marriage of late stage capitalism (and its reliance on the selling of “ideas” rather than goods and services) and the post-Citizen United codification of corporate personhood. Red Lobster isn’t a restaruant anymore. It’s your rule-breaking, shrimp loving, newly empathetic pal. It sees you. In fact, it is the only one who see you. It gets that you’re broke, but more so that you’re alone. It’s no longer offering you cheap shrimp (the price tag for the promotion has risen markedly since its last iteration). It’s promising you something more important– belonging, connection, a port in the storm of alienation and precarity we’re all weathering.
But Red Lobster isn’t alone, in surveying a landscape of mass alienation (economic, relational, spiritual) and seeing a business opportunity. Advertising agencies are publishing unironic blogs chillingly titled “the loneliness crisis: how brands can step up?” Silicon Valley’s greatest minds heard that you wanted community and responded with sycophantic AI chatbots. Apparently, our tech overlords’ understanding of human relationships is a robot who agrees with you all the time, including when you muse about harming yourself. Even the outright scammers get it. Gone are the days of far flung princes offering you a financial windfall. As you may have experienced personally, the hot new con is… pretending to be an acquaintance and inviting you to a party.
This is a step beyond the classic commodification funnel, as documented in nineties leftist classics like No Logo and The Conquest of Cool. The brands are no longer promising a great deal, or even hipness. What’s on offer now is the dream of a welcoming community, one deep enough to solve for the isolation that the companies themselves helped create.
That’s very depressing, of course, both the reminder that our economy has always been built on the exploitation of vulnerability, and the reality that there’s just so much more vulnerability to be exploited at this particular moment.
But there’s another truth, not a counterpoint, but a complement. How fortunate, for those of us who actually want to connect with other human beings, rather than just make a quick buck off of them. We already have what every corporation in the world wishes they had– the fact that, when we offer a space by our side, to either a stranger or a friend, we actually mean it. We’re not trying to trick you into springing for a Main Deck Margarita Flight to go along with your shrimp. We’re not trying to mine your data or add you to a marketing funnel or load you up with debt and junk. We just think this world would be more navigable together rather than apart.
And as an organizing opportunity? From union drives to neighbor-to-neighbor activism to the precious few political campaigns that care more about building community than personal brand building? My goodness. Why do you keep hearing about neighborism these days, and not just from true believers like me? Because more people are admitting every day how hungry they are for connection, and then taking the risk of making an offering.
The terrible news right now is that the hucksters are going to keep selling us a flim flam simulacra of belonging. Yes, the consultants, but also (I fear) the politicians. I strongly suspect the 2028 Democratic primary to feature a million text messages about “neighbors” and “community” penned by a well-heeled K-Street consultants. But the good news is that we aren’t that dumb. We know the brands aren’t our friends. We’ve lived through the great social media con together. We know what the lie looks like, and now we’d much prefer the deeply imperfect, thoroughly messy alternative.
It’s World Press Freedom Day, I celebrated with a great conversation on The Andy Borowitz Showwith Andy and director Laura Nix about free speech, and the predictions made in the film DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE that have come true since its release.
Today, the national average gas price is $4.43 a gallon. That’s the national average. If you are in California, a gallon of gas will cost you more than $4.43. If you’re in a place like South Carolina, it will probably be a little less. At any rate, it’s much more expensive than it should be, all because of Donald Trump.
One whatabout that MAGAts use is that gas prices were high when Joe Biden was president, at least for a minute. What they leave out is that Joe Biden didn’t do anything to cause high gas prices. When gas prices were high under Biden, they were high internationally, and again, not because of any negative policies inflicted by President Biden.
Today, gas prices are also high internationally, and it’s all because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump chose to start a war that didn’t need to be started. Trump is trying desperately to get a deal with Iran and get them to the negotiating table, which is where they were before he started dropping bombs on them. (snip-MORE)
Donald Trump is attempting to select his own citizenry and control who can vote by gathering the personal details of all Americans, Arizona’s top election official has warned.
Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, fears that the Trump administration’s active efforts to forcibly extract voter files from 30 states including Fontes’s own are part of a bigger plan to gather vital information on all US citizens into a centralised database. “Trump is trying to amass a master list that will allow him to declare someone an enemy of the state,” he said.
In his 19th-floor office in Phoenix, Fontes said that in his view Trump wants to create the equivalent of “apartheid in the United States” and likened his actions to those of his counterpart in North Korea. With personal information on all Americans at his disposal, the president could regulate key aspects of the lives of his opponents, including “shutting off their bank accounts, or keeping them from getting healthcare”.
“This is Donald Trump trying to pick his own voters,” he said.
Fontes won a major victory in his running battle with the Trump administration on Tuesday when a federal judge threw out a lawsuit from the US justice department against Arizona over its refusal to hand over its voter roll. The judge, Susan Brnovich, a Trump appointee, ruled that the Department of Justice was not entitled to the document under federal law.
The suit was part of a push by the DoJ to obtain voter roll information from all 50 states, suing 30 including Arizona that have refused to co-operate. At least 13 states have voluntarily complied with the DoJ’s demands, but many others are resisting.
In those cases where courts have ruled on the dispute – California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts and Rhode Island – all judges have found against the administration. Fontes – who was himself sued after he declined to hand over the data, pointing out that it would be illegal under state law to divulge sensitive personal information about almost 5 million Arizonan voters – has joined that list of vindicated parties.
“This is now the sixth federal court to reach the same conclusion. Arizona acted correctly in refusing this request, and today’s ruling vindicates that decision,” he said.
Fontes was elected secretary of state four years ago as part of a sweep by Democrats of top statewide positions. Katie Hobbs was elected governor and Kris Mayes as attorney general.
All three are now in re-election battles facing Republican challengers who have in varying degrees embraced the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
Arizona has for years been pivotal to Trump’s efforts to stoke election denial conspiracy theories. Maricopa county, which covers Phoenix, is one of the largest and most electorally consequential swing counties in the country.
In 2020, it was the focus of a fierce battle in which Trump loyalists attempted to declare victory in the face of his defeat to Democratic rival Joe Biden. The Republican-controlled state senate contracted Cyber Ninjas, a private security firm that had no background in election administration, to conduct an audit into Maricopa county’s results.
The audit, which was widely debunked, concluded that Biden had won the election.
Arizona is now back in the crosshairs as the November midterm elections approach. The state has been the subject of at least three federal investigations into its election procedures, with the Trump administration continuing to press unfounded claims that electoral fraud is rife.
The DoJ claims that its data demands aim to root out rampant fraud and voting by noncitizens. Fontes rejects that argument .
“This doesn’t have anything to do with non-citizens, because non-citizens don’t vote. Every study shows that,” he said. “So what you have here is an unprecedented invasion into the privacy of Americans, sold under a false narrative of illegal voting.”
In March the FBI seized a vast stash of digital data that had been compiled by the Cyber Ninjas’ audit of Maricopa county in 2020. Though it is unclear what exactly was in the trove, it is possible that it included details of votes cast and images of actual ballots.
The material was handed over to FBI agents under a federal grand jury subpoena by the Republican president of the state senate, Warren Petersen. Fontes was scathing about Petersen’s decision to cooperate with the subpoena, suggesting it may have broken state data-protection laws.
“He was so quick to turn over the material as a political favor to Donald Trump,” Fontes said. “Clearly he had no intention of protecting Arizona voters or legal processes.”
Petersen’s compliance with the FBI subpoena is likely to be a factor in the mid-term election for Arizona attorney general. He is currently the frontrunner to become the Republican candidate challenging Mayes, the incumbent Democrat.
The third federal investigation into Arizona elections is being conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It is also taking a renewed look at the 2020 presidential election result in a further bizarre move to relitigate a contest that was settled more than five years ago.
“It’s like herpes,” Fontes said, referring to the perpetual resurfacing of the election denial conspiracy in Arizona. “It just keeps coming back. And I just don’t think the state, or the nation, deserves that.”
Trump’s latest ploy to wrestle control over elections from the states is his executive order last month that tries to limit mail-in voting by creating a national voter file to which the US postal service would have to defer before delivering mail ballots. The order, which is being challenged as unconstitutional, is especially sensitive in Arizona, where 80% of votes are cast by mail in a system devised decades ago, ironically, by the Republican party.
“This is a bald-faced attempt at completely controlling American democracy according to the whims of one political actor, and that’s not just un-American, it’s absolutely anti-American,” Fontes said.
Fontes is gearing up for his own potentially bruising re-election battle in November, in which he is likely to be competing against an election denialist. The two Republicans vying for their party’s candidacy in the secretary of state’s race both have election-denial track records.
Alexander Kolodin, a lawyer, was placed on probation by the state bar association after he filed lawsuits challenging Biden’s 2020 victory that a judge slammed as being full of “gossip and innuendo”.
The other candidate, the former chair of the Arizona Republican party, Gina Swoboda, was the Trump campaign’s director of operations on election day in 2020. She claimed in a lawsuit that was dismissed for lack of evidence that more than 1 million ineligible voters may have been on the rolls.
Fontes said he was “cautiously optimistic” that he and his Democratic peers would sweep the state again in November. But he conceded that “we have to be extra vigilant”.
“We have to spend every single day from now until November focused on communicating as clearly as we can with every Arizona voter,” he said.
Two factors were in play this midterm cycle that would make re-election more difficult, he said: unlike in 2022, there is no US senate race in Arizona this year, so there is less of a draw to attract Democratic voters to the polls.
The other factor he pointed to was that since 2022, the rightwing activist group Turning Point USA has grown in influence. Turning Point, whose leader Charlie Kirk was killed by a gunman in September, is headquartered in Arizona and in Fontes’s view has largely surplanted the old Republican party in the state.
“We’ve got to be cautious because we’re going to be running against the conspiracy theories, lies and misrepresentations,” he said. “The stakes of this election are enormous, and every voter will be impacted by the outcome.”
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