Trump shows public support for embattled defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth

(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department filed suit against Virginia on Friday over a statewide program aimed at removing voters from its election rolls in the lead-up to the 2024 election if DMV records don’t indicate United States citizenship.

The Department said it filed the lawsuit based on a federal law that prohibits purges from rolls within the 90-day period leading up to an election.

“As the National Voter Registration Act mandates, officials across the country should take heed of the law’s crystal clear and unequivocal restrictions on systematic list maintenance efforts that fall within 90 days of an election,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

The system, implemented via executive order by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, has already faced lawsuits from several immigration rights groups.

The DOJ recently filed a similar lawsuit against the state of Alabama over similar voter roll purges.

The Justice Department seeks injunctive relief that “would restore the ability of impacted eligible voters to vote unimpeded on Election Day,” the department said in a statement.

In a statement on the governor’s website, Youngkin called the lawsuit a “politically motivated action,” and vowed to not “stand idly by.”

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(NEW YORK) — On the same day that former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general, Trump announced that he will pick former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to fill that role in his administration.

Bondi, 59, has remained in Trump’s inner circle for years and has continued to advise him on legal matters. She was one of the lawyers who defended Trump during his first Senate impeachment trial.

“I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Bondi’s nomination must be confirmed by the Senate. She did not immediately comment about Trump’s announcement.

For more than a decade, Bondi has been a key Trump supporter and has been involved in some controversies, including the “big lie,” pushed by Trump in 2020.

In 2013, the Trump Foundation sent a $25,000 donation to Bondi’s fundraising committee for her attorney general reelection campaign. Around the same time, Bondi’s office had been considering reviewing a lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general’s office that probed Trump and Trump University, but it ultimately did not join the suit.

Bondi and Trump both denied allegations that the donation led to her decision to not join the lawsuit. She endorsed Trump for his presidential run and spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention leading a “lock her up chant” against then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. She also served as a co-chair of Trump’s 2020 reelection bid.

Bondi left the Florida Attorney General’s office in 2019 and a year later was named part of Trump’s defense team for his first impeachment trial. He was acquitted in the Senate.

Bondi continued to be part of Trump’s legal team during the 2020 election and repeatedly made false claims about voter fraud when he lost to Joe Biden.

Recently, she has been a member of the conservative think tank America First Policy Institute where she serves as the chair for the Center for Litigation, and co-chair of the Center for Law and Justice, according to the think tank’s website.

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(Washington, D.C.) — With less than a week before the 2024 presidential election, the infrastructure has “never been more secure,” according to the head of the federal agency tasked with America’s cyber defense.

Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told ABC News’ Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas that she has “incredible confidence” in the security of the election.

“I understand why some Americans have questions, because they’ve been subjected for years to a fire hose of disinformation, and it has undermined confidence in the election systems and in our democratic institutions, but I have spent so much time on the ground over the past three plus years with state and local election officials who are on the front lines of running and managing and defending election infrastructure, and I can tell you, I have incredible confidence that our election infrastructure has never been more secure,” Easterly said during an interview at CISA headquarters.

“Election officials have never been better prepared to deliver safe and secure and free and fair elections for the people,” she said.

For example, she said that 97% of registered voters will cast a ballot in jurisdictions where they’ll get a paper record that they themselves can verify, which is “incredibly important,” she said.

Voting machines are not connected to the internet and that is a “great source of protection.”

That disinformation is being amplified by foreign adversaries, according to Easterly, who pointed to various examples of disinformation already being debunked — such as a fake video of ballots being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

She said foreign adversaries have two goals: to undermine American confidence in the election and sow discord in the country.

“Within a day, the federal government used our tools, our forensic analysis, to affirm that it was a fake video, that it was a Russian manufactured video,” she said. “So at the end of the day, we are going to lean very far forward when we see inaccurate information that could undermine Americans trust in elections.”

CISA is also responsible for advising election officials on the physical security of their election.

“As a retired Army officer, as a combat veteran who has been in very dangerous places where we’ve had flak jackets and, you know, we’ve been behind layers of security, it is disconcerting to me, as an American, to see election offices with bulletproof glass and panic buttons and barbed wire fences,” Easterly said. “That’s not the way it should be in America, and we know that these threats, harassment, bullying, swatting, threats of violence to election officials and their families, election officials of both parties largely stemming from unfounded claims that the 2020 election was rigged.”

She said election workers are not “faceless bureaucrats,” but rather friends and neighbors.

“They’re not doing it for pay or for glory. They’re doing it because they believe in our democracy, and they deserve respect, they deserve gratitude, and they deserve to be safe,” she said,

The director said recent incidents such as the ballot boxes being set on fire in Oregon and Washington and the denial of service attack against the Georgia Secretary of State’s office are expected to happen but voters should be assured there is no impact on their elections.

“What Americans should understand is these incidents will not impact the security or integrity of votes being cast or those votes being counted as cast. And election officials have trained for this, they’ve exercised for it, they’ve prepared for this – all manner of scenarios, whether it’s ballots that need to be replaced or cyber security threats that need to be dealt with, or for criminal activity like fraudulent registrations that need to be investigated And the perpetrators held criminally accountable. Election officials are prepared for this. They’re ready for this to meet this moment.”

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