Emil Bove, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be US Circuit Judge for the 3rd Circuit, testified during his Senate confirmation hearing on June 25, 2025. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“We must vote in numbers so overwhelming that no Trump judge could deny the truth.”
If the Trump administration decides to challenge the outcome of any of the dozens of battleground contests in next week’s midterms, there’s a significant chance that one of the president’s handpicked, election-denying judges will oversee the case.
That’s according to a report published Tuesday by the advocacy group Demand Justice, which found that 53 of 60 battleground races for US House and Senate that will be held on November 3 “are in districts or states presided over by at least one Trump-appointed federal judge who, under oath, refused to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.”
“If these judges couldn’t tell the truth about 2020, we can’t count on them to do so in 2026,” said Josh Orton, president of Demand Justice. “We must vote in numbers so overwhelming that no Trump judge could deny the truth.”
The report defines battleground races as Senate and House contests that analysts currently rate as either a toss up, lean Republican, or lean Democratic.
Demand Justice emphasizes that federal courts “look very different” today than they did in 2020, when the judiciary “halted Trump’s attempt to challenge the 2020 election results.”
“Since then, Trump appointed Emil Bove and Jennifer Mascott to the Third Circuit, Rebecca Taibleson to the Seventh, Michael Martin to the Eastern District of Michigan, and Eric Tung to the Ninth Circuit, which hears appeals from Arizona,” the report notes, pointing to courts that previously weighed 2020-related cases.
During their confirmation hearings, each of those Trump-picked judges—along with dozens of others—refused to explicitly say that Trump lost the 2020 election. As Demand Justice observed in an earlier report, Trump’s judicial picks used virtually identical phrasing to evade senators’ questions about the 2020 election results, saying that former President Joe Biden “was certified as the winner.”
The report comes amid mounting concerns that the Trump administration could try to intervene in the midterms if the outcome is unfavorable to Trump and his Republican Party, which is seeking to maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
Demand Justice cited as an alarming example the Justice Department’s lawsuit aiming at blocking certification of Alaska’s US Senate election if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses. Trump told reporters late last week that he ordered the DOJ to file the lawsuit, which Democratic nominee Mary Peltola is seeking to dismiss before Election Day.
“Trump’s attempt to interfere in Alaska’s Senate race is a wake-up call,” said Orton. “His administration will not accept election results unless the Republicans win.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering (armed extortion).
President Donald Trump’s first taxpayer-funded ad, which aired on September 23, 2026. (Screenshot from an ad posted by the White House)
The administration had allocated $20 million in public funds to pay for ads celebrating Trump weeks before the midterms.
Less than a week before Election Day, another federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from using taxpayer funds to run ads promoting the president.
US district judge Loren AliKhan froze the White House Office of Management and Budget’s $20 million allocation to run the ads, saying the administration likely “used public dollars to unlawfully finance a national media campaign in the final weeks before the November 2026 elections.”
The ads, which stated that they were “paid for by the US government,” attacked Trump’s enemies as “Marxists,” celebrated his military operations in Iran and Venezuela, and promoted his personal declaration that his presidency marked the beginning of a “golden age of America.” Another ad that was reportedly prepared but never aired declared that “God made Trump.”
— Commentary Trump Daily Posts (@TrumpDailyPosts) May 19, 2024
Following public outcry over the ads, Trump promised that future ads would be paid for with money he raised for his super political action committee MAGA Inc.
“That promise went unfulfilled,” wrote AliKhan, an appointee of former President Joe Biden. “The ads continued to air with the ‘Paid for by the US government’ disclosure for at least another week.”
The US Department of Justice has also acknowledged that the ads continued to run hundreds of times after a court order issued on October 11 requiring them to be canceled.
Federal law prohibits using federal appropriations for “publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.”
The DNC argued that the administration’s use of public funds illegally “deprives the DNC of a fair electoral process by adding public funds to the resources available to support Republican candidates.”
AliKhan agreed that there was “little doubt that defendants’ unlawful use of public funds makes it more difficult for the DNC to achieve its mission of ‘electing Democratic candidates in federal, state, and local elections across the country.’”
“The court just delivered a victory for the rule of law and for American taxpayers,” DNC chair Ken Martin said following the ruling on Wednesday. “Trump and his administration can no longer misuse Americans’ hard-earned dollars to run political ads while working families can’t even afford to pay for their gas and groceries.”
Martin added that “Trump’s illegal and desperate attempt to save his cratering approval ratings ahead of the midterm elections only underscores how out of touch he is with the American people, who will hold him and Republicans accountable for their destructive agenda at the ballot box next week.”
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering (armed extortion).
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Guardian (9/26/26): “Donald Trump has long coveted the oilfields of other nations.” [26/9/26]
Since the January 3, 2026, military strikes and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has imposed semi-colonial rule over Venezuela, forcing dramatic shifts in the country’s domestic and foreign policies.
The capstone of the new tutelary regime is an oil deal announced in late August that Trump called “the biggest in history.” The agreement turns over 17 prime oilfields, holding over 20% of the country’s reserves, to a Pentagon-controlled corporation tasked with supplying cheap fuel to the US war machine for decades to come.
After spending years manufacturing consent for US-sponsored regime change in Venezuela (e.g., FAIR.org, 6/4/21, 1/11/23, 2/12/25), having a government in Caracas subservient to Washington represented a new scenario for the corporate media. The novel conditions have raised few significant qualms for Western outlets. Tactical objections notwithstanding, there is no fundamental disagreement with the US running the affairs of a Global South country.
Not ‘stealing Venezuela’s oil’
Energy Secretary Chris Wright (France 24, 3/9/26): “I’ve seen those headlines. ‘We’re Stealing Venezuelan Oil.’ Of course, that’s not true at all.”
Working hand in glove with the Trump administration, the acting Delcy Rodríguez government has overhauled Venezuela’s hydrocarbon legislation (Venezuelanalysis, 7/13/26) to offer what oil experts consider a business environment more favorable to foreign capital than at any point in the country’s history. The new oil agreement with the White House manages to go even further.
The 17 oilfields in question will be taken over by North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a private company in which the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) will get a 35% stake while investing nothing—and wielding veto power over its board.
Furthermore, according to the White House, the US State Department will secure 20% of NABEP’s output at cost, and have a right of first refusal over the remaining 80%. On top of this, Venezuelan officials have already suggested Washington would be given an additional “sales discount” (Venezuelanalysis, 9/9/26).
In summary, Trump is looking to secure cheap crude supplies at a time when his disastrous Iran debacle has thrown global energy markets into upheaval. The agreement is so blatantly skewed that US Energy Secretary Chris Wright felt he needed to clarify that Washington was not “stealing Venezuela’s oil” (AFP, 9/3/26).
Nevertheless, Western media outlets were largely unfazed by such an obvious oil grab, euphemistically referring to the deal as “highly unusual” (New York Times, 8/29/26) or “remarkable” (BBC, 9/1/26), at most as “contentious” (Guardian, 9/1/26).
Corporate journalists did raise objections over the central role played by NABEP owner Alejandro Betancourt, a shady Venezuelan businessman who faced multiple money-laundering probes before the Trump administration intervened, and pressured judicial authorities at home and abroad to drop the investigations (BBC, 9/2/26; CNN, 9/4/26; New York Times, 9/4/26).
But media seemed satisfied with Trump’s state and energy secretaries Marco Rubio and Chris Wright pledging that US oversight will keep proceedings honest (Reuters, 9/2/26; New York Times, 9/4/26), despite the fact that billions in Venezuelan oil revenues, controlled by the US Treasury Department since January, are unaccounted for (Council on Foreign Relations, 6/3/26; Financial Times, 7/22/26).
Procedurally transparent plunder
The New York Times (5/5/26) wrote positively of “a new era of accountability” in which “the United States would control Venezuelan oil sales” and “Venezuela would submit monthly budgets to the White House.”
Objections to the Venezuela/NABEP/Pentagon venture were mostly procedural and out of concern for appearances, not driven by any principled opposition to US imperialist predation. Faced with outright colonial plunder of Venezuela, the political and media establishment only demands “accountability” and “transparency” (New York Times, 5/5/26; Financial Times, 9/18/26).
For months, the White House has controlled Venezuelan oil export revenues, with Trump officials openly calling them “one of the largest assets ever to go on the US balance sheet,” and a source of “leverage” over Caracas. Yet Trump’s Democratic opponents have found no issue with seizing another country’s income, raising only questions about the allocation of the funds in reference to alleged corruption on the part of Caracas and Trump insiders (The Hill, 9/30/26; Washington Post, 9/17/26). This despite the fact that the Venezuelan government has to submit a “monthly budget” to access its own funds (New York Times, 1/28/26) and is subjected to US-imposed auditors (Reuters, 4/27/26).
The other source of disappointment with Trump stomping all over Venezuelan sovereignty, but prioritizing oil over regime change, is impatience for the restoration/recovery/return of “democracy” to Venezuela (Politico, 9/2/26; Guardian, 8/30/26; CBC, 9/3/26). Despite widely acknowledgement that Trump is eroding democracy at home (New York Times, 8/20/26, 10/14/26; Guardian, 10/8/26), somehow pundits expected him to prioritize it in an oil-rich foreign country.
In the establishment’s consensus, “democracy” does not mean a political system that meaningfully reflects the Venezuelan people’s collective will, but simply one that empowers opposition figures that have been groomed for years, like far-right María Corina Machado, their undemocratic credentials notwithstanding (FAIR.org, 10/23/25).
Eager to stay in power, Rodríguez has over-complied with every US demand, going as far as adopting language about Venezuela undergoing a “democratic transformation.” Her pliancy has earned her favorable corporate media profiles that completely contrast with the demonization of Maduro.
After securing an exclusive interview, Time (7/30/26) described the acting leader as a “disciplined operator” who “advocate[s] for greater economic openness,” in contrast to the “authoritarian” Maduro, who oversaw “economic collapse.” Along the same lines, the Guardian (9/12/26) presented Rodríguez as a “a pragmatic, witty and intelligent workaholic,” unlike her “authoritarian” and “incompetent” predecessor in the presidential palace.
Nevertheless, given the broad Beltway consensus for comprehensive regime change, it is unlikely that the Rodríguez administration’s subservience to Trump will secure any leeway in determining its political path forward, free from outside meddling—especially if, as is anticipated, the GOP lawmakers most likely to be impressed by such obsequiousness lose power in the US’s upcoming midterm elections (Axios, 9/23/26; Financial Times, 10/9/26).
Please think of the corporations!
Reuters (9/1/26): ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips “have repeatedly said that their requirements of legal certainty and contract sanctity have not yet been met.”
Alongside their exceptionalist expectations about “democracy,” legacy outlets also focus on those they consider the true victims of Trump’s neocolonial offensive in Venezuela: multinational oil corporations.
According to Reuters (9/1/26), the recent oil deal “raises red flags for major producers,” who fear having their reputation sullied by being “seated at the same table with Betancourt,” as well as the prospect of the US government becoming a “competitor.”
Bloomberg (8/30/26) raised concerns that the agreement “reprises [the] neocolonial past” of Venezuela’s oil industry. The warning stems not from apprehension that the Venezuelan people’s future is being determined by a foreign nation, but from fear that the US’s “out-sized power” might lead to “popular unrest.” This could create conditions for what the business mouthpiece views as a catastrophic outcome: the nationalization of foreign-owned oil assets.
“The troubled history of Venezuela’s oil offers a cautionary tale,” Bloomberg’s Kevin Crowley and Patricia Garip wrote:
The country was once dominated by US and European operators and was among the world’s largest producers. But assets owned by ExxonMobil Holdings Corps. and ConocoPhillips were seized and nationalized during political upheaval in the 2000s.
Corporate media present companies that made massive profits in Venezuela for decades as victims, because the Chávez government wanted them to comply with new laws and accept minority stakes in joint ventures.
The New York Times (9/1/26) complains that the two corporations “have spent years trying to get the country to repay them for their seized assets, with little success.” The statement conceals the fact that the Venezuelan government, when it enacted the 2007 decree imposing state majority in all Orinoco Oil Belt projects, offered to compensate ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips for their transition to minority partners, or to buy out their assets altogether. However, both corporations rejected the offers in order to pursue international arbitration. The former has already recouped most of what it was granted, while the latter will eventually collect on a significant award.
Despite the fact that Chevron, BP, Shell and other energy giants have signed deals in recent months taking advantage of the reformed hydrocarbon law (Venezuelanalysis, 9/3/26), pundits complain that ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips remain “hesitant” (CBS, 8/31/26) and need to be “lured” (Reuters, 9/1/26). Still, the Western corporations are likely to return to the country with favorable deals (Reuters, 9/16/26).
The victor and his spoils
Belén Fernández (Al Jazeera, 9/24/26): “You’re not technically supposed to admit that you attacked a country just to get its oil.”
Faced with strategic defeat in West Asia, Trump has clung to his Venezuela success, stating on multiple occasions that “to the victor belong the spoils,” in reference to the US hijacking the Venezuelan oil industry following the January 3 attacks and presidential kidnapping (Al Jazeera, 9/24/26; Guardian, 9/26/26).
Furthermore, Trump has not been shy in boasting about the US winning a “war” against Venezuela (Financial Times, 9/18/26; New York Times, 6/26/26). Corporate journalists have rarely pointed out that this stance directly contradicts the administration’s official position that the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores was a “law enforcement” operation (New York Times, 1/6/26; PBS, 1/8/26) in order to justify bypassing congressional approval.
The US president has likewise claimed to have recovered the costs of the military operation “many times over” (Al Jazeera, 3/3/26; Guardian, 6/28/26), a fact confirmed by Luigi Pisella, a business sector spokesperson with close ties to the acting Rodríguez administration (Venezuelanalysis, 8/10/26). Pisella stated that the US has retained $4.7 billion from the Venezuelan export revenues it controls to cover the costs of its military operation.
In spite of their ostensible hostility to Trump, corporate outlets have historically been complicit with his Venezuela policies, from whitewashing a deadly sanctions program (FAIR.org, 6/13/22) to endorsing a military buildup over debunked “narcoterrorism” accusations (FAIR.org, 11/19/25). The New York Times and Washington Post went as far as to withhold information in order to not jeopardize the January 3 operation (FAIR.org, 1/13/26).
Now, with a semi-colonial regime in place, the only concerns are about procedural transparency, democratic appearances and the well-being of multinational corporations. The Venezuelan people always get the short end of the stick.
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Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, CEO of Dell Technologies Michael Dell, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and co-founder of Google Sergey Brin attend the Golden Age of American Innovation Summit on October 8, 2026 in Washington, DC.(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“Trump and his anti-AI regulation posture is dragging the party to a politically suicidal place,” said one Democratic strategist.
American voters’ antipathy toward Big Tech companies has become a central theme of campaigns in the 2026 midterm elections, according to an analysis published by The Guardian on Thursday.
The Guardian noted that hundreds of midterm campaign ads attacking data centers have aired over the past two months, with both Republicans and Democrats accusing one another of being pawns of the artificial intelligence industry.
“And it’s not only data centers,” The Guardian added. “The public anxiety over AI and distaste for the billionaires developing it, as well as backlash over encroaching tech like surveillance cameras, has turned the tech industry into a ubiquitous villain this election cycle.”
Silicon Valley has become a punching bag for politicians even as Big Tech moguls have been throwing record sums of money to elect politicians sympathetic to their needs.
Super political action committees (PACs) “funded by tech billionaires are among the top spenders in this election cycle,” The Guardian explained. “Leading the Future, formed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, has raised more than $75 million to back tech-friendly candidates. [SpaceX CEO] Elon Musk has sunk $366 million into Republican causes, more than he spent on the 2024 presidential election.”
Much of the Big Tech money has been going toward Republican candidates this cycle, even though the industry has traditionally had close ties with elected Democrats.
Texas Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico in recent days has been trying to turn Big Tech money being spent against him into an advantage, highlighting in particular the outsize role that Musk is playing funding the campaign of his Republican rival, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
After Musk on Wednesday used his platform X to declare that “there is something deeply wrong with Talarico,” the Texas Democrat quickly returned fire.
“There is something deeply wrong with a political system,” Talarico wrote, “that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal US senator.”
A report published by The Atlantic on Monday examined how the tech industry’s embrace of President Donald Trump during his second term has given Democrats an incentive to pummel the industry, particularly when polls show a bipartisan hostility to AI data centers.
In fact, Democratic strategists told The Atlantic that data centers have proven to be a top wedge issue capable of getting normally loyal GOP voters to think twice before voting for a Republican candidate.
“Trump and his anti-AI regulation posture is dragging the party to a politically suicidal place,” Democratic strategist Rob Flaherty told The Atlantic. “They are grabbing the wrong side of an 80–20 issue at exactly the wrong time.”
Democratic strategists started pushing the party to take a more populist approach toward the tech industry when polling data “showed surprising concern about AI” even in traditionally conservative rural districts, The Atlantic reported.
Rishi Bharwani, US director of tech regulation advocacy group Reset Tech, said much has changed since Democrats under former President Barack Obama embraced the industry as a positive force for society.
“What we all experienced was a ton of growth in the tech sector, the creation of numerous new billionaires, and even the world’s first trillionaire,” said Bharwani, “and a bunch of working families basically recognizing that they’re not sharing. These tech companies are actually undermining their economic security and their safety.”
Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him UpClimate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) poses for a portrait in her office on Capitol Hill on December 10, 2025. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.”
US Rep. Ilhan Omar on Monday forcefully condemned the Department of Homeland Security’s raid on her Washington, DC home as part of a broader effort to weaponize federal law enforcement against progressives who oppose President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“This is part of the fascist playbook to rile up Trump’s die-hard supporters and give them a big distraction in advance of the midterms,” Omar (D-Minn.) wrote in an email distributed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee hours after the raid. “With this obviously political investigation, Trump is telling his voters: ‘Ignore the price of gas, ignore the war in Iran, ignore that you’re losing your healthcare—we want you to get angry about this instead.’”
The email followed a statement issued by Omar’s office saying that the congresswoman “has done nothing wrong” and condemning the raid as “an outrageous abuse of power.”
“For a decade, Donald Trump has relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar with inflammatory rhetoric, repeatedly putting a target on her back,” the statement read. “Now, those attacks have escalated to a pointless federal raid.”
The Trump Justice Department said the raid, executed by the investigative arm of DHS, was “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” Trump administration officials are reportedly probing whether Omar, who entered the US as a child refugee from Somalia and became a citizen in 2000, is in the country illegally. CBS News reported that the investigation centers on paperwork completed by Omar’s late father when she was a child.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that he has “nothing to do with” the Omar investigation while attacking her as a “terrible person.” Omar and the Somali American community in Minnesota have been frequent targets of the president’s bigoted attacks, and Trump has called for the Democratic lawmaker to be jailed or deported.
“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced,” Omar wrote in a social media post on Monday.
In the campaign email, Omar called the federal investigation a “sham” and “further proof” that Trump is “willing to use the power of the federal government to try to intimidate and silence anyone who stands up to him.”
“It’s up to us to make sure it doesn’t work,” Omar added.
The raid on Omar’s home drew widespread condemnation, including from top Democrats in Congress. The leadership of the House Democratic caucus issued a statement calling the raid a “deeply disturbing” act that “raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump’s adversaries.”
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) denounced the raid as “fascism in the extreme.”
“Trump is weaponizing the federal government to escalate his racist attacks against Rep. Omar, undermine her ahead of the midterms, and distract from his failures as president,” Kamlager-Dove added.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him Up
