Appropriate Behavior

Blue language within.

Justin Jones Burning The Confederate Flag In The TN State Capitol. That’s It, That’s The Post.

White racist Tennessee Republicans think they birthed a nation yesterday. Looks like they birthed something else instead.

Democratic TN state Rep. Justin Jones burns a Confederate flag in the state Capitol, Thursday, May 8, 2026, video screengrab

Yesterday, the Ku Klux Klan, we mean Tennessee state Legislature, rushed through new maps to eliminate the state’s last remaining Democratic congressional seat in Congress, and racist pigfuck Governor Bill Lee signed them, because that’s what white supremacists do when Donald Trump’s partisan hack Supreme Court says it’s unconstitutional for them not to hurt Black people by gutting the last remaining piece of the Voting Rights Act.

The lawsuits are already being filed, and to be sure, Republicans don’t even understand the war they started yesterday. As we wrote, it’s useful to remember that Republicans always, 100 percent of the time, overplay their hands.

We quoted Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, who until yesterday was running in a primary against long-serving Congressman Steve Cohen to represent what was the Ninth District, in Memphis. We guess how exactly that will end up is undetermined at this exact moment, but Pearson said earlier this week at a rally that “[I]f we keep marching, if we keep pressing, if we keep fighting, the future that our descendants will live into will be a better one than this one. And our message to the Republican Party, our message to that racist, white-supremacist president Donald Trump is that we will fight.”

Pearson, if you remember, is one of the two Black men in the Tennessee Three, back when the grand wizards of the Tennessee Lege first bent over and showed everybody their Klan-hood-shaped buttplugs, expelling the two men from the state House for taking to the House floor to try to defend their constituents against gun violence. Also for being Black men, because they didn’t expel the white woman, Knoxville Rep. Gloria Johnson, for being part of the same protest. (Voters of course sent the two Justins right the fuck back to the Legislature.)

Both Justins were of course present yesterday to witness what white supremacist Tennessee Republicans really think was the Birth of a Nation. And there were many protests in the Tennessee state Capitol yesterday. Justin Jones of Nashville set a Confederate flag on fire, or at least a paper version of it.

And then he stomped that sad loser little bitch of a flag — a flag the greatest losers who ever lived died defending, and their family legacies are less valuable than dried dogshit because of it — right on out.

And what are people saying about that, and about iconic pictures photographers captured of that? “Hang it in the Louvre.”

Oh, it’s gonna be in museums and history books all right.

Rep. Jones, “Brother Jones” as he refers to himself on Instagram, posted videos and images of the already iconic moment.

View this post on Instagram

And he typed:

The South will not rise again, until it’s paid for all its sins of racism and white supremacy.

Today, I left the Capitol Klan Rally, where my white Republican colleagues took off their white hoods and dismantled Black political power in our state. It’s shameful, it’s immoral, and it will go down in the history books alongside the legacy of George Wallace and Bull Connor.

Tennessee has shamefully become the first state to pass a new, racist congressional map following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which dismantled the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

When I walked into the building it was 2026, and when I walked out it was pre-1965. This racial power grab against Black voters is purely rooted in control and elimination of their voices in our democracy. Today’s Jim Crow laws passed in our legislature spit on the graves of our Civil Rights martyrs who bled and died for the right to political power and representation.

They are dragging us backwards in history but we refuse to be moved.

I burned the Confederate flag, because the neo-Confederate caucus that assembled today will be defeated again. Their vision of the South, rooted in plantation politics and racial division will not win. Instead we must use this moment to ignite our rebellion and movement even more towards real justice and multiracial democracy. We must build towards a South that can RISE ANEW.

We will not go back!

“Burn it, young brother,” said Joy-Ann Reid in response. So say we all.

Burn. That. Shit.

The Word Of The Term Is Corruption

I’d run across this article linked somewhere earlier this past week. But, I couldn’t read it or post it, because it was behind a paywall. Well, thanks to Punctuated.Equilibrium over on MPS Friday night, here it is! Well, a goodly snip of it. Give ’em a click to read it all, because they lifted the paywall so that everyone who wants to know can read it.

The everything, everywhere, all at once corruption story.

I’m pleading with you to look at the president’s self-dealing.

1 May 2026 Written by: Isaac Saul

(snip-skipping a bit at the top)

During President Joe Biden’s term, the Department of Justice could say, at least, that it had investigated the president’s son. Republicans in Congress also conducted a yearslong investigation into the Hunter Biden business ties and how they might link back to the president. Here, though, we have nothing; every story I’m about to point to has not produced even a unified statement of concern from, say, a half dozen Republican senators worried about government corruption.

Remember, Hunter’s story was about drawing a $50,000/month salary while his dad was vice president and then allegedly trying to arrange some business ventures he might cut Joe Biden in on once he was out of office. Republicans’ yearslong investigation never turned up any hard evidence of the latter, though there was enough smoke I still think the story was plausible.

Today, we’re talking about the president’s children launching multi-billion dollar business ventures — several of them — while the president is in office, and then explicitly exchanging all manner of domestic policy victories, foreign policy concessions, and literal pardons in the construction of those deals. Trump himself has all but admitted this is happening. He told The New York Times that “nobody cared” when he tried to separate his family business from his administration during his first term, so he isn’t even trying now.

I have tracked these stories with one of my senior editors for the last year and a half. The list of things that have happened is so long and shocking when you see it all together that I’m not entirely sure how to present it. I’ve gone back and forth; maybe I should build a flow chart? What about a spreadsheet? Should this be a YouTube video, instead of a written piece? Will anyone actually read the entire thing? Can anyone actually process this level of self-dealing, corruption, and shadiness at once?

Ultimately, I decided that the best I can do is try to write all these instances down in an engaging way that might grab your attention and wake us all up from whatever stupor we’re in. So… here goes.

Let’s start with the cryptocurrency.

Perhaps the largest vehicle for Trump’s self-dealing has been his foray into cryptocurrency. This is a complicated space that I will try to make as straightforward and simple as possible.

In 2024, the Trump family launched a crypto company called World Liberty Financial. Trump is listed as a “co-founder emeritus.” By December of 2025, they had profited roughly $1 billion from proceeds while holding $3 billion in unsold cryptocurrency tokens, amassing a fortune larger than their entire real estate portfolio. At the same time the president was pushing his family’s new crypto venture, he was cutting crypto regulation, touting the potential of private digital currencies to help the U.S. economy, and promising to unleash the industry he and his family were simultaneously profiting from.

But the president wasn’t only directly making money in an industry he was deregulating; the Trumps benefitted through intermediaries, too. Last summer, World Liberty Financial bought a publicly listed firm and raised $750 million from investors to buy its own cryptocurrency, WLFI. The Wall Street Journal tepidly described this setup as an “unusually circular transaction with the same party as buyer and seller” that could net the Trump family an additional $500 million.

Essentially, the Trump family launched a cryptocurrency firm while deregulating the crypto industry, then bought a separate firm that it used to buy its own cryptocurrency while also raising three quarters of a billion dollars from investors to buy that same cryptocurrency.

Just days before he was inaugurated, Trump also launched a personal “memecoin” called $TRUMP. Memecoins are cryptocurrencies made about internet jokes, pop culture moments, or viral trends. They have no underlying value or technological purpose; the value of the coin is driven entirely by social hype. Trump created hype for his memecoin by launching it months after being elected and just three days before being inaugurated. He promoted $TRUMP on social media and, while president, even held a dinner for the top 220 holders of the coin at one of his golf resorts in Virginia. He held another one at Mar-a-Lago this past weekend. The initial coin offering released 200 million tokens of its billion-token supply to the public on the first day. The price skyrocketed 300% overnight and hit an all-time high of $74.27 on January 19, right before Trump’s inauguration. $TRUMP has since cratered, losing 97% of its value (for context, if you had bought $1,000 at its peak, your $1,000 would now be worth about $30).

Trump, naturally, profited. The exact figures are hard to pin, but The Financial Times estimated that the scheme netted him personally about $350 million, while Trump’s holdings of the coin through a separate partnership could be worth billions more. It wasn’t just the president, either; First Lady Melania Trump launched her own memecoin, which also skyrocketed in value before a massive sell-off that she profited from (what people in the industry call a “rug pull”). Most of the people who bought and held the coin based on the hype the Trumps created ended up losing most of their money, but the coin’s creators got rich (or, in this case, richer).

This cryptocurrency foray hasn’t just been a vehicle for self-enrichment, but also a vehicle for quid pro quos. Perhaps the most obvious and overt involved Justin Sun, a crypto billionaire who was being investigated by the SEC for fraud. Sun, in the midst of his investigation, bought $75 million of WLFI — the World Liberty Financial coin — and then became an adviser at the company. Shortly after that investment, the SEC backed off its investigation and settled with him for $10 million, a small fraction of the expected penalties he was set to pay (on top of potential prison time). Of course, it’s possible that the SEC, an organization now openly being influenced by the president, just happened to back off its investigation in the weeks following Sun’s $75 million investment into Trump’s crypto firm.

It’s also possible that the two events are related.

The crypto story, though, hardly ended there. In late April, CBS reported that Sun was suing the Trump administration’s World Liberty Financial, alleging fraud. That’s right: Sun, whose initial case has since concluded, has now turned around and sued the Trump family, alleging that the president and his sons are illegally blocking him from selling his digital tokens that are worth as much as $1 billion. Sun also claims that World Liberty Financial tried to pressure him into investing in its stable coin, and that the company froze his tokens after he refused to commit more money to the business.

It’s hard to identify the villain.

Sun’s apparent quid pro quo to get out from under government oversight is just one example. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, was pardoned by President Trump shortly after Zhao helped boost WLFI’s prominence by allowing the currency to be traded on the crypto exchange Binance, which Zhao started. After the pardon, Zhao became one of the Trumps’ business partners, boosting the family’s crypto empire while skating serious charges that he allowed money to flow to terrorists, cyber criminals, and child abusers on his platform.

If that’s not enough, more shocking news broke this week. According to The Wall Street Journal, World Liberty Financial inadvertently partnered with two men the U.S. government had sanctioned a month before for helping run a transnational criminal syndicate that had stolen billions of dollars from Americans through online scams. To repeat: Last fall, the Trump administration announced criminal charges against a transnational criminal syndicate for stealing billions of dollars from Americans in online scams. A month later, two of the men it sanctioned partnered with the Trump family’s crypto company.

The evidence of crypto investments from foreign nationals operating as de facto bribes doesn’t end there. Consider the story of Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) president and one of the most powerful politicians in the Middle East (he’s served as the UAE’s national security advisor since 2016). He stewards an empire of wealth worth roughly $1.5 trillion, and a firm closely tied to him secretly signed a deal for a 49% stake in WLFI worth $500 million — including $187 million paid upfront to Trump family entities just days before Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after Trump took office, the administration undid a national security block that would have prevented the UAE from getting up to 500,000 advanced Nvidia AI chips.

Some right-wing writers, like National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, have been brave enough to take this story head-on — but many have ignored it.

Sometimes, the favors happen en masse. The crypto industry as a whole was a top donor to Trump’s 2025 inauguration fund, and the SEC then dropped or paused over a dozen cases against crypto firms, or simply handed them huge access to government-directed crypto entities. Several of those cases, like Sun’s, were tied directly to donations. Coinbase donated $1 million; its lawsuit was dropped. Ripple ($4.9 million) and Solana ($1 million) had their tokens added to the national Digital Asset Stockpile.

I want to pause here to remind people that we spent all four years of the Biden administration talking about Hunter Biden’s alleged $50,000 a month salary while working at an energy firm in Ukraine, and the possibility that he was setting up some business deals for his father after he left the vice presidency. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced articles of impeachment alleging Biden “abused the power of the Office of the Vice President, enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, by allowing his son to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept various benefits—including financial compensation—from foreign nationals in exchange for certain favors.”

Conversely, the final tally of investments from parties with conflicts of interest into crypto assets personally managed by the Trump family safely enters the range of billions of dollars — a scale of thousands of millions, in just one sector and in just over one year, while the president was actually in office.

It’s not just cryptocurrency.

(snip-MORE. It reads just as quickly on the page)

Pete Hegseth’s Far-Right Pastor: “Immodestly Dressed Women Are Sluts Who Just Give It Away To Every Slob”

Pete Hegseth’s Far-Right Pastor: “Immodestly Dressed Women Are Sluts Who Just Give It Away To Every Slob”

The Times of London reports:

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.”

Read the full article. It’s quite the deep dive.

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 Times and Sunday Times (@thetimes.com) 2026-05-05T11:45:51.187Z

Let’s talk about Trump wanting a billion tax dollars for his ballroom….

Political cartoons / memes / and news I want to share. 5-6-2026

Sorry this is not as long as I normally do. Ron found me sleeping at my desk an d only gave me a few minutes to finish before he forced me to bed physically. Hugs

Here’s a last strip from my new book Dating Tips for Trans and Queer Weirdos!

The house below was once owned by Scott Bessent the current Secretary of Treasury under tRump. I would love to own a home like this or at least be able to afford one like it. It is a famous home called the Pink House. Hugs

These are fake The first three were posted by tRump but the left is the one that has to turn down the rhetoric.

This is the real Obama bowing picture.

And this guy posted 86 46 during Bidens term and the post is still up. But Comey is on trial for threatening the cult leader and not Posobiec who did the same to Biden.

And this one is real. tRump suluted an enemy general from North Korea.

And this one is real also.

“The more likely prospect, they say, is that he becomes an independent who caucuses with the GOP, or simply casts his vote to ensure Thune remains majority leader. Ensuring control of the Senate could be especially critical should there be a Supreme Court vacancy http://www.politico.com/news/magazin…

— Randy Fair (@southerngayteacher.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T14:20:49.652Z

81 percent of young Americans say economic conditions are bad or terrible: Survey #TheHill

— #TuckFrump (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T19:51:39.000Z

NYC reports fewest murders ever through April, violent crime declines in Bronx gothamist.com/news/nyc-rep…

— Gothamist (@gothamist.com) 2026-05-04T15:53:49.333419Z

In many states, election-denying candidates are running to control voting http://www.npr.org/2026/05/04/n…

— Ray Beckerman (@raybeckerman.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T15:08:27.517Z

NEW: A Republican U.S. Senate candidate said he's recruiting off-duty police officers to serve as poll watchers in Detroit for the 2026 midterms — and suggested they could flash their badges at voters.Intimidating voters is illegal. Interfering with someone's right to vote is a federal crime.

— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) 2026-05-04T15:48:35.403313056Z

🚨BREAKING: Florida voters and pro-voting group Equal Ground Education Fund filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the GOP’s new congressional gerrymander, urging a court to block the map for violating the state constitution’s ban on partisan gerrymandering. http://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/…

— Marc Elias (@marcelias.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T18:40:56.248Z

New: A Probe of Trump Foes Upends Justice Department Hub in MiamiDeep dive from Chris Strohm and Michael Smith –>buff.ly/ApWT31g

— Zoe Tillman (@zoetillman.bsky.social) 2026-05-05T16:47:20.073Z

Both headlines are from today.

— Adam Isacson (@adamisacson.com) 2026-05-04T21:27:03.352Z

Mamdani condemns ICE action at Bushwick hospital, says NYPD didn’t coordinate gothamist.com/news/mamdani…

— Gothamist (@gothamist.com) 2026-05-04T17:18:52.774838Z

Judge mulls contempt over DHS’ ‘patently false’ allegation in deportation caseThe Trump administration attacked a judge for releasing an accused murderer, but it withheld existence of the foreign warrant.www.politico.com/news/2026/05…

— Lauren Ashley Davis (@laurenmeidasa.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T21:35:32.535Z

You see this press release from DHS about a federal judge? The agency pushed it out 5 days ago. Today, a DOJ attorney admitted to the judge that it “simply was not true.”(It’s also still online at DHS dot gov as of 540 pm Monday)1/

— Bill Grueskin (@bgrueskin.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T21:43:02.441Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — US military says Iran has launched missiles, drones and small boats at ships the US is protecting in Strait of Hormuz.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T16:35:18.324Z

BREAKING: UAE says three missiles from Iran intercepted. MS NOW's David Rohde has the latest.

— MS NOW (@ms.now) 2026-05-04T15:43:14.006Z

Trump describes Iran war horrors in Oval Office full of kids: ‘Right between the eyes’

— The Independent (@the-independent.com) 2026-05-05T16:42:02.720027Z

* SOUTH KOREA'S FOREIGN MINISTRY: FIRE AND EXPLOSION HAPPENED ON A KOREAN VESSEL IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ* SOUTH KOREA FOREIGN MINISTRY: CHECKING CAUSE OF FIRE AND DETAILS ON DAMAGE AT THE KOREAN VESSEL* SOUTH KOREA FOREIGN MINISTRY: TO CLOSELY COMMUNICATE WITH RELEVANT COUNTRIES@reuters.com

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T14:11:52.060Z

President Donald Trump threatened Iran, saying it will be 'blown off the face of the Earth' if it doesn't stop attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

— The Express US (@the-express.com) 2026-05-04T19:05:50.273Z

More Than 150 Wind Projects Stall as Pentagon Delays ReviewsThe delays, which companies say have worsened significantly in recent weeks, are the latest step in the Trump administration’s efforts to block wind power.www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/c…

— James Hughes (@dystopian-fashion.bsky.social) 2026-05-05T01:15:37.587Z

Open Windows & Clay Jones

Fugly Passport

Quick! Renew your passport before they start putting Trump’s photo on them!

Clay Jones

You got a new blog yesterday, but you didn’t get a new cartoon. Did you miss me?

From the Department of I-think-I’m-going-to-throw-up comes news that the State Department is going to issue passports featuring Donald Trump’s face. It’s not even his smiling face, either, as he’s grimacing in the photo, much like his mug shot.

Do the heads of all these agencies that’re putting Trump’s face, name, and signature on everything come up with this shit on their own, or is it ordered from the White House? Either way, everyone in the Trump administration is a sick sycophant. Why do they want us to look like North Korea? Why?

But yes, you heard correctly. They are going to put Trump’s face on American passports. If you’re like me, you worry that you won’t have a choice and that Trump’s face will be placed right next to your cheery mug, which would be sure to draw scorn as you go through customs and immigration while traveling internationally. Don’t we have enough to apologize for while traveling as Americans? (snip-MORE)

Lead sponsors and honorary chairs of the Met Gala

Maybe Jeff Bezos should buy a fashion house…

Ann Telnaes

…instead of owning a newspaper since he doesn’t support a free press

From Mrs. Betty Bowers, An Awards Show!

Clay Jones, Open Windows

World Press Freedom Day

Defend the free press and our democracy

Ann Telnaes

It’s World Press Freedom Day, I celebrated with a great conversation on The Andy Borowitz Show with 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.

Catch the podcast video along with the film for free on the website through May 4.

Starting May 5, you can find the film on Kinema.com for home and group viewing, as well as gifting to friends and family who would like to see it.

In the evening of May 5th there will be a Kinema Launch Event hosted by The Media and Democracy Project, 7 pm ET. Join an online screening, live conversation and Q&A with special guests discussing the threat of media consolidation in light of the upcoming media mergers. Free tickets are limited, sign up for the event here

Court blocks mailing of Mifepristone

An early Mother’s Day wish

Ann Telnaes

Because grown women couldn’t possibly make their own reproductive decisions without courts and politicians.

MAGA Malaise

Gas prices and Trump’s approval ratings are going in opposite directions

Clay Jones

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)

“We have to be extra vigilant”.

‘Apartheid in the US’: Arizona’s secretary of state fights Trump’s plot to amass a ‘master list’ of voters

Database could be used to regulate opponents, from ‘shutting off bank accounts’ to healthcare, official warns

Ed Pilkington in Phoenix, Arizona

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.”

12 places Trump’s name or image is being added by the federal government

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/federal-government-adds-trump-name-image-buildings-programs-currency-rcna343097

The Trump administration has made an aggressive push to add the president’s name to buildings, battleships, money and government websites.

President Donald Trump is physically leaving his mark on Washington and beyond, more so than any other president in modern U.S. history.Andrew Harnik / Getty Images file

May 3, 2026, 5:00 AM EDT

By Dareh Gregorian and Megan Shannon

The federal government is undergoing an unprecedented presidential branding makeover, with Donald Trump’s name being added to everything from buildings and battleships to a drug website and a park pass.

While Trump has had roads and even an airport named after him since winning a second term in office, his administration has initiated a series of actions to imprint his name and likeness on the federal government well beyond internal documents and communications.

Not all of those efforts have been successful, such as a push to have a New York City train station and Washington, D.C.-area airport named after Trump. But the scope of the others is enormous, including the addition of his signature to U.S. paper currency — a first for a sitting U.S. president.

The branding is in stark contrast to prior presidencies, including Trump’s first term, when the largest branding controversy involved having his name added to Covid relief checks during an election year.

Here’s a look at all the places and items where the administration has added Trump’s name during his second term.

Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace

The U.S. Institute of Peace headquarters in Washington last year.Alex Kent / Bloomberg via Getty Images file

The first federal building to be named after a sitting U.S. president was the U.S. Institute of Peace headquarters in downtown Washington in December 2025. The agency was named by Congress when it was established through legislation in 1984.

The renaming was carried out by the State Department.

“President Trump will be remembered by history as the President of Peace. It’s time our State Department display that,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on social media on Dec. 3, 2025.

The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts

The Kennedy Center in Washington last year.Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images file

About two weeks after the Institute of Peace renaming, the president’s handpicked board at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts voted to add his name to the storied performance venue as well.

“The unanimous vote recognizes that the current Chairman saved the institution from financial ruin and physical destruction,” a spokesperson for the center said at the time.

Democrats and some Kennedy family members say the name change is illegal, since the center was established as a living memorial to Kennedy. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, who’s an ex officio member of the board, filed a suit challenging the change. The case is still in litigation.

Trump-class battleships

“Trump-class” battleships were announced at Mar-a-Lago last year.Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images file

Also in December, then-Navy Secretary John Phelan unveiled “Trump-class” warships during an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

The “Trump-class battleships,” including a vessel dubbed the USS Defiant, will be “the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans,” Phelan said.

“Hopefully we never have to use them, but there will never be anything built like these,” Trump said at the event.

The Trump gold card

President Donald Trump displayed a “Trump gold card” visa aboard Air Force One last year.Mandel Ngan / AFP – Getty Images file

The president unveiled his “Trump gold card” visa in December. Foreign nationals can pay $1 million to obtain the card, which enables them to legally live and work in the U.S. once they’re approved.

It’s “the green card on steroids,” Trump said as he displayed the card at the White House. He said companies can buy the gold cards for students so they can stay in the country instead of being “shipped out” after graduation.

As of late April, only one person has been approved for the card, The Associated Press reported.

Trump coins

Designs for Semiquincentennial gold coins featuring President Trump.Treasury United States Mint

In March, a federal commission consisting solely of Trump-appointed members approved a 24-carat commemorative gold coin depicting the president in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary.

The design approved by the Commission of Fine Arts features an image of Trump in the Oval Office on one side and a bald eagle on the other. The coin needs to be approved by the Treasury Department, which has already announced plans to release a separate $1 coin featuring the president as part of the anniversary celebration.

Trump dollar bills

The President boarding Air Force One with a $50 bill sticking out of his pocket last year.Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images file

The Treasury Department announced in March it would be adding Trump’s signature to “future paper currency” as another part of the country’s 250th anniversary.

“There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in his announcement.

Paper currency typically only bears the signature of the treasury secretary and treasurer, and has never featured that of a sitting president.

Trump passports

The State Department will be releasing a limited series of U.S. passports featuring an image of President Trump.U.S. State Dept.

The State Department announced in April that it would be issuing a limited number of U.S. passports with a large image of Trump on the inside cover as part of the 250th celebration as well.

Olivia Wales, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the “new patriotic passport design provides yet another great way Americans can join in the spectacular celebrations for America’s 250th birthday.”

Trump national park pass

The Interior Department revealed in November that it was featuring Trump and George Washington on the front of its annual park pass, citing the 250th anniversary.

That move led to a lawsuit from an environmental group, alleging the department violated a 2004 law requiring the pass to carry a picture by the winner of an annual photo contest. The winner for this year had been image of Glacier National Park in Montana.

Trump banners

The Department of Justice headquarters in Washington earlier this year.Brendan Smialowski / AFP – Getty Images

Large banners of Trump have been hung from the Justice, Agriculture and Labor departments.

The banner at the Department of Justice reads, “Make America Safe Again.”

“We are proud at this Department of Justice to celebrate 250 years of our great country and our historic work to make America safe again at President Trump’s direction,” a DOJ spokesperson said when the banner was hung in February.

TrumpIRA.gov

Trump issued an executive order in April directing the Treasury Department to launch a new website called TrumpIRA.gov.

The site aims to help more American workers find and compare private-sector retirement savings accounts.

Trump Accounts

A “Trump Accounts” event in Washington in January.Win McNamee / Getty Images file

The Trump administration is launching new savings accounts for children this summer called Trump Accounts.

Created under the “big, beautiful bill,” Trump Accounts are tax-advantaged investment accounts for children under 18. Babies born from Jan. 1, 2025, to Dec. 31, 2028, will get $1,000 from the Treasury Department to kick-start their accounts.

“This is something that’s so special,” Trump said at his State of the Union speech in February.

TrumpRx.gov

The launch of “TrumpRx.gov”, which the adminstration said would help to lower prescription drug prices, at the White House in February.Nathan Howard / Getty Images file

In February, the administration launched TrumpRx.gov, a self-pay prescription drug website. It offers coupons that people can take to the pharmacy where they fill their prescriptions.

“You’re going to save a fortune,” Trump said at the news conference launching the site. “And this is also so good for overall healthcare.”