The SAVE Act appears to be dead, at least for now.
Trump wanted his party to enact the SAVE Act because it was supposed to make it more difficult for citizens he thinks are Democrats to vote: Its strict ID requirements would have impacted poor people, elderly people, students, married women, and others.
Although Trump pushed hard for its passage, most recently during the State of the Union address, enough Senate Republicans defected to make passage a possibility too remote to pursue. Republicans attempted a “talking filibuster” to get the bill across the finish line, but the procedural unity that would have required failed to materialize. Per Punchbowl News, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Utah’s John Curtis, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, and possibly others who weren’t named broke ranks.
It’s a major loss for the president.
There is also good news out of Fulton County, Georgia.
Instead of the hearing we were expecting on the County officials’ request to have their 600 boxes of election records restored to them this Friday, we got an order from Judge J.P. Boulee.
The County officials asked the Judge to use Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 to restore their property to them. That rule permits: “A person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property or by the deprivation of property may move for the property’s return.” Judge Boulee set forth the four requirements for establishing that the moving party is entitled to have their items returned:
(1) the government displayed a “callous disregard” for the plaintiff’s constitutional rights;
(2) the plaintiff has an individual interest in and need for the material whose return he seeks;
(3) the plaintiff would be irreparably injured by denial of the return of the property; and
(4) the plaintiff does not have an adequate remedy at law absent the Rule 41 proceeding.
The Judge pointed out that a successful Rule 41 proceeding would not deprive the government of the use of evidence for lawful purposes. If returned, the County would be required to preserve the documents for the government’s later use—a requirement that it is already subject to, because these are election records that must be maintained.
The Judge noted his obligation to hear testimony and take evidence if he was ultimately called upon to decide the dispute. That’s something that DOJ might be eager to avoid, given the apparent irregularities in their process, which saw the head of the Atlanta FBI office step aside and a U.S. Attorney from Missouri, instead of the one in Atlanta, handle the matter. He then gave the government an out: “the Court believes it is best for the parties to work toward a mutually agreeable resolution before receiving additional evidence.” He gave them until March 4 to agree on a mediator and until the 18th to report back on whether the mediation succeeds.
It’s a strong move from the Judge. He declines to rule on whether the County officials can meet the high standard for proof under Rule 41. But the fact that he hasn’t denied their request out of hand and is treating it this seriously strongly suggests to the government where this is headed if they don’t reach a deal to return the records to the County. Rule 41 proceedings don’t usually make it this far, and the government has to be concerned that’s a very bad sign for them. The risk that they will still have to return the items they seized pursuant to a court order, and that all of their maneuvering will be publicly exposed in the process, is substantial.
There’s a subtle additional benefit here. The subtext has always been that this process, designed to cast doubt on election officials in the County (even though recounts and court cases confirmed the outcome), was designed to permit Republicans who control the state legislature to take over elections. It will be much more difficult for them to proceed while this process lingers, so a delay of even a couple of weeks, with the elections drawing ever closer, isn’t a bad thing.
And finally, a caution.
The Washington Post reported this morning that “Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.”
Of course, at the time, and with Trump officials in place running cybersecurity, there was a different message. In a Joint Statement, the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience CISA, the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC), and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (SCC), reported that “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history . … There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised … While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections … we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.” Chris Krebs, Trump’s Director at CISA, told 60 Minutes that “[Election] Day was quiet. There was no indication or evidence that there was any evidence of hacking or compromise of election systems on, before, or after November 3 … We did a good job. I would do it one thousand times over.”
Beyond that, a 2021 intelligence review concluded that China did not engage in efforts to influence the 2020 election. There were multiple audits and recounts, court rulings, and investigations without any finding of widespread fraud. There was no evidence of coordinated foreign interference.
So we all get it. It’s another ginned-up emergency. There wasn’t an outbreak of irrepressible crime on American streets that necessitated the federalization and deployment of the National Guard. Trump made that up. A Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, wasn’t invading the United States. Trump made that up. There wasn’t a balance of payments problem that warranted the imposition of exceptional tariffs. Trump made that up. And there’s not an emergency involving our elections that means Trump should take control of them. He’s making that up too—to the extent that there’s an emergency, he’s the cause of it.
The order Trump’s election denier buddies are pushing would use the supposed China emergency as the reason to declare yet another national emergency. The Post’s reporting suggests they will claim that permits them to “mandate voter ID, ban mail ballots, and change voting machines in November’s midterm elections.” How convenient—all the stuff they want to do, but can’t, because the law doesn’t permit it or Congress won’t pass laws authorizing it, tied up with a nice, neat bow into another one of those “uh oh—emergency, so I can claim extraordinary powers” executive orders Trump has become so fond of using.
The reality is that the president lacks constitutional authority to control elections. The Constitution gives that authority to the states. Even if Trump declared another national emergency, there is no basis for the assertion it would permit him to seize control of the elections. All this plot shows is that Trump lacks confidence in his party’s ability to win the midterm elections.
The election deniers are back in the White House and hard at work, as they were in 2020, to try and prevent American voters from determining the outcome of this year’s elections. Just like it did in 2020, the rule of law will prevail here.
Pro-voter lawyers will go to court if Trump tries to implement this kind of desperate attempt to rig the election. And they will win. Even the Supreme Court has ruled against Trump, now in both the National Guard and in the tariffs cases, when he attempted to drum up fake emergencies to justify his assumption of exceptional powers. Nothing is certain with this Court, but district court judges who are increasingly taking this administration to task and holding it to account are likely to pave a smooth path. And working against the administration is the clear fact that the greatest threat to free and fair elections isn’t China, non-citizens, or Democrats—it’s this president and his cronies.
For years, I’ve been working to educate the public on the fact that voter fraud isn’t the problem—all of the evidence is to the contrary. The real issue is Republicans who use false or dramatically overblown claims of fraud to suppress the vote, and keep eligible citizens from voting. Let’s stay informed and make sure they don’t get away with that this year.
I feel our national security has been deeply harmed by the tRump adminsitration. I posted for tomorrow how Ukraine started making big gains against Russia’s invasion once they and foreign countries stopped sharing the war intel with the US. Seems clear everything Ukraine was sharing with the US went right to Putin. tRump’s amistration has given military secrets and tech to enemy countries just for their personal profit. And the worst of the stuff they hide. Horrific and I wonder with the military purges if the US can actually recover in the next decade. Hugs
Reddit, Meta, and Google voluntarily “complied with some of the requests” for identifying details of users critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent as part of a recent wave of administrative subpoenas the Department of Homeland Security has been distributing to Big Tech the past few months, according to an anonymously sourced New York Times report.
Those three companies, plus Discord, have received “hundreds” of such requests that have come from DHS recently. Meta, it should be noted, is the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
Administrative subpoenas used for this purpose represent an escalation. This tool, which comes not from a judge but from DHS itself, was formerly reserved for situations like child abductions, according to the Times.
The users were targeted because their posts “criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents,” the Times says.
A Google spokesperson replied to the Times with a statement, saying “When we receive a subpoena, our review process is designed to protect user privacy while meeting our legal obligations,” and “We inform users when their accounts have been subpoenaed, unless under legal order not to or in an exceptional circumstance. We review every legal demand and push back against those that are overbroad.”
Gizmodo requested comment from Meta, Discord, and Reddit. We will update if we hear back.
According to the Times, one or multiple of the relevant companies have stated that they notify users of these requests from DHS, and give them a 14-day window to “fight the subpoena in court” before complying.
Amazon has also been accused of at least some degree of participation with ICE’s ongoing mass deportation efforts. In October, Amazon-owned Ring announced a partnership with Flock that would loop the AI-powered network into the content coming from users’ doorbell cameras. According to a 404 Media investigation, that network feeds information to law enforcement agencies at the local and federal levels, allowing for reasonable concern that ICE has access to all that footage.
Protesters have launched an effort called “Resist and Unsubscribe” targeting ten tech companies they perceive as exceptionally supportive of ICE. That list includes Meta, Google, and Amazon, but not Reddit.
Donald Trump’s ICE is doing exactly what he wants. And now they are holding a political prisoner for nearly a year in an ICE detention camp simply because 33-year-old Leqaa Kordia dared to champion views the Trump regime opposes. This should concern all Americans especially given the recent warning from concentration camp expert Andrea Pitzer—who explained on my SiriusXM show that history tells the Trump regime building massive ICE detention camps will ultimately be used to imprison political prisoners.
That should not be a surprise to anyone who follows the history of fascist and other right wing regimes. Trump is following the fascist playbook, complete with his own secret police that has terrorized and even killed Americans who defy him. The most glaring example being the murder of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—who were then smeared by Trump officials as “domestic terrorists.”
Shockingly, we just learned that Trump’s ICE shot and killed another US citizen, 23 year old Ruben Ray Martinez, almost a year ago in March of 2025. However, Trump’s secret police covered up their involvement until recent media reports broke the story open. The details surrounding the murder of Martinez–who worked at Amazon–are simply unbelievable with ICE claiming that for some unknown reason this young man with no criminal record suddenly used his car to attack ICE officers.
Beyond that ICE has terrorized American citizens who dared film them—which they are legally entitled to—assaulted protesters and engaged in conduct consistent with an occupying army, not federal agents.
But it’s not ICE acting as a rogue agency—Trump wants them to do this. Trump—like Putin– wants to silence dissent as we’ve seen with his regime targeting all who oppose him from comedians like Jimmy Kimmel to seeking to criminally charge and imprison six Democratic members of Congress for warning members of the military to not follow illegal orders. A grand jury blocked that–at least for now.
That is why the case Leqaa Kordia demands far more attention given it’s a sneak preview of what we can expect from Trump for not just immigrants–but also U.S. citizens. Leqaa is a 33-year-old Palestinian woman with family in Gaza and the United States. Her mother is a US citizen living in Paterson, New Jersey—which is where Leqaa was staying and working as a waitress until she taken by ICE.
Leqaa Kordia
Kordia—who came to the US in 2016 on a student visa and was in the process of seeking permanent residence status via her mother –has no criminal record. The diminutive woman poses no threat to anyone. But to the Trump regime she is dangerous because she participated in peaceful protests advocating for Palestinian humanity. In the case, of Leqaa this issue is very personal in that she has lost nearly 200 relatives in Gaza.
But Leqaa’s case is not about Palestine—nor it is about Israel. Rather, it’s about freedom of speech—and the Trump’s regime targeting those who dare defy them.
How this case began was that in March of 2025, ICE informed Leqaa they wanted to speak to her. In response, she voluntarily appeared at the ICE office in Newark, New Jersey–where she was quickly arrested, thrown into an unmarked van and sent 1,500 miles away to the Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas far from her lawyer and family.
Since then, she has been detained in horrific conditions. As Leqaa detailed in a recent op-ed, the ICE facility she has been held in for nearly a year “is filthy, overcrowded and inhumane.” She slept in a plastic shell “surrounded by cockroaches and only a thin blanket.” And the food quality is so atrocious, it has caused her to vomit resulting in significant weight loss.
Worse, just a few weeks ago she experienced the first seizure of her life, collapsing to the floor. From there, ICE transported her to a hospital where her wrists and legs shackled to her bed for the three days. As she put it, “The entire time I was chained…I felt like an animal.” And simply to be cruel, ICE refused to tell her lawyers or family where she was or her medical condition.
None of this should be happening. As her lawyer Amal Thabateh explained to me, two different immigration judges ruled that Leqaa should be released on bond. But the Trump regime instead invoked a little used procedure to keep her in detention open ended.
To do that, serial liar DHS Secretary Kristi Noem smeared Leqaa as being a “terrorist” sympathizer for expressing concern for Palestinians in Gaza. They even claimed that releasing Leqaa—who again has no criminal record and was living with her US citizen mother in New Jersey–was somehow a threat to our nation. Of course, this is the same Noem who smeared with lies Renee Good and Alex Pretti as “terrorists” to justify their murders so we know she will say anything to defend the Trump regime’s crimes against humanity.
The idea Leqaa is a political prisoner is not just my view. Amnesty International lists her on their website demanding that the US government “release detained protester.” Her case is in the same section on the Amnesty website where they are calling for the release of dissidents in Russia, Belarus and other authoritarian regimes. This is where our nation is now viewed by human rights organizations.
Deeply alarming is that these ICE dentition centers are increasingly become death camps. At least 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025—the highest number in two decades. And in the past six weeks, six people have died in ICE custody including one man killed by ICE agents as they were restraining him. Will anyone be held accountable for this man’s death? That is like asking will anyone be held accountable for the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny killed in a Russian prison two years ago. We know that no one will be prosecuted because Russia is an authoritarian nation. As disturbing as it sounds, so is the United States under Trump.
But for those who refuse to submit to Trump and want to stand up for freedom of speech, I hope you will sign the Amnesty International petition calling for the US government to release Leqaa. Other ways to help this young woman include calling on your members of Congress to demand her release. You can also consider making a donation to her online fundraising page to help her and her family. Finally, you can follow Leqaa’s campaign for freedom on Instagram and amplify the updates.
As Andrea Pitzer repeatedly warned in our conversation on concentration camps, it does not end with people like Leqaa. It begins with people like Leqaa being held with in a camp for as long as the regime wants to keep her–in horrific conditions–simply because they want to silence her political views. They then continue until they reach people like us. But as the famous poem goes, by then it’s too late because when “they came for me…there was no one left to speak out.”
——
Below is my recent interview about Leqaa’s wrongful detention with her lawyer Amal Thabateh, who is with Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) Project and Laila El-Haddad, an award-winning Palestinian author, social activist, policy analyst and journalist.
The Dean’s Report by Dean Obeidallah is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
It is always OK to ask to stop. Consent can be withdrawn at any time! You are not a sex toy or sex slave unless that is what turns you on. Even then you have the right to say stop. You are a person. Anyone who doesn’t stop when asked is an abuser that doesn’t deserve you. Hugs
A recent article from Jesse Singal in the New York Times seemed to indicate the organization might be quietly retreating from supporting trans youth care.
Yesterday, anti-transgender activist and columnist Jesse Singal published a piece claiming there were “cracks in the wall” around gender-affirming care (which you can find fully fact-checked here). To make that case, he relied heavily on a statement from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons that bypassed the organization’s normal scientific review process and was advanced under pressure from leadership aligned with the Trump administration, including a president who is a major Republican donor. Singal also invoked the American Psychological Association, suggesting the organization was retreating from its 2024 position supporting transgender care and rejecting claims that gender identity is “caused” by external factors. But a representative for the APA tells Erin In The Morning that the organization stands firmly by its 2024 guidelines supporting transgender youth care and provided documentation indicating Singal mischaracterized its position.
“No, APA’s position has not changed,” says a representative speaking for the APA, attaching a link to their 2024 policy statement which provided broad support for gender-affirming care. “APA continues to support unobstructed access to evidence-based care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals of all ages.”
The 2024 policy statement is to date one of the most significant supportive stances of any medical organization for gender-affirming care. It states that gender-affirming medical care is medically necessary, opposes bans on gender-affirming care, declares that being transgender is not caused by autism or post-traumatic stress, establishes the organization’s support for combatting disinformation on transgender healthcare, and finds that rejection of a trans youth’s gender identity can increase their risk of suicide and harm their psychological wellbeing. The policy was passed overwhelmingly, 153-9, with each voter representing a large subset of the organization’s 157,000 members. Now, the organization says that it is not accurate to claim that there is any regression on support for transgender youth care from the organization.
The organization also disputes Singal’s portrayal of a 2025 letter written by Katherine McGuire to the Federal Trade Commission. In his piece, Singal claims the APA “cautioned that gender dysphoria diagnoses could be the result of ‘trauma-related presentations’ rather than a trans identity,” and noted that “co-occurring mental health or neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder) … may complicate or be mistaken for gender dysphoria,” framing this as evidence that the organization is retreating from its 2024 policy supporting transgender youth care. That interpretation is incorrect, according to an APA representative, who says the letter does not contradict the organization’s 2024 position and does not represent a regression in its support for evidence-based transgender care. (snip-MORE)
And again with the big-money outsiders meddling in state lawmaking:
The ballot initiative is bankrolled by billionaire anti-trans donor, Richard Uihlein, and represents a new line of attack against transgender people in blue states.
Anti-trans organization “Protect Girls Sports in Maine” has announced that it has collected enough signatures to get a combination transgender sports ban and school bathroom ban onto the November 2026 ballot, making Maine the second state this year to announce a ballot initiative targeting transgender people in a blue state after a similar effort in Washington. This comes after Maine Gov. Janet Mills fiercely rejected Trump administration attempts to strongarm the state into enacting such restrictions on its own, under threat of losing school lunch money and more. Now, voters may directly determine the fate of transgender youth in schools across the state after a massive signature drive bankrolled by billionaire Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein, the latest in an attempt by ultra-wealthy conservative donors to export anti-trans discrimination across the United States through direct ballot measures.
“Not only will our initiative become the only citizen-led issue to appear on the 2026 Maine ballot, but we will likely be the first state where voters can protect female sports at the ballot box this November. We will pave the way for the rest of this nation,” said Leyland Streiff, the lead petitioner, about the ballot initiative turn-in. Notably, he remained cagey about bathrooms, which the ballot initiative will also heavily impact, in a possibly strategic angle to hide that the bill is much more expansive than he gives credit for.
The initiative would, according to the summary page, define a person’s sex for school purposes as “a person’s biological status as male or female recorded at birth on the person’s original birth certificate.” It would “require schools to maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms, shower rooms, and other private spaces for each sex,” going beyond sports. It would also create a “private right of action” for a student who “suffers direct injury because of a violation of a provision of the initiated bill,” allowing students to sue if they encounter transgender students in bathrooms at schools or in sports. Lastly, it specifically carves out transgender students in bathrooms and sports from the Maine Human Rights Act.
Maine LGBTQ+ organizations fiercely condemned the bill. David Farmer, speaking on behalf of an opponent coalition of LGBTQ+ organizations across the state, called the referendum a “one-size fits all approach to sports participation and bathrooms that will increase bullying and harassment and cost local schools millions of dollars for construction and litigation.” He also called out the billionaire backing of the bill, stating, “This is a cynical attempt by one of the richest people in the world to manipulate voters in hopes of influencing the U.S. Senate race, the race for governor and the races for Congress.” (snip-MORE)
“If you don’t help dig out the car, then I can’t take you to school, and if you don’t go to school I’m going to lose my friggin’ mind. You don’t want Mommy to lose her friggin’ mind, do you?”
“They’re also my staying-indoors-all-winter clothes.”
Scottie's Playtime 