federal government

President Trump has long spread conspiracy theories about voting designed to explain away his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Now that he’s president again, Trump has stocked his administration with those who have promoted his falsehoods and in some cases helped him try to overturn his loss.

Those election conspiracists now holding official power range from the attorney general to lawyers filing lawsuits for the Justice Department. Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who unsuccessfully pushed the Justice Department in 2020 to back the president’s false claims, is now leading a sweeping probe of the vote from that election.

The most dramatic action from that mandate was the seizure in late January of ballots and 2020 election records from Fulton County in Georgia, a Democratic stronghold that includes Atlanta. The county has long been a target of election conspiracy theorists aligned with Trump, and the affidavit for the search warrant shows the action was based on 2020 claims that in many cases had been thoroughly investigated.

Election officials across the country, especially those in states controlled politically by Democrats, are bracing for more turmoil during this year’s elections, when control of Congress is on the line.

“The election denial movement is now embedded across our federal government, which makes it more powerful than ever,” said Joanna Lydgate, chief executive of States United Democracy Center, which tracks those who promote election conspiracy theories. “Trump and his allies are trying to use all of the powers of the federal government to undermine elections, with an eye to the upcoming midterms.”

Trump has remade the federal government as an arm of his own personal will, and his attorney general, Pam Bondi — who helped try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss — has declared that everyone working at the Justice Department needs to carry out the president’s demands. Even with all the issues facing him in his second term, from persistent concerns about the economy to his immigration crackdown, Trump continues to push the false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.

Some of the people who populate his administration are, like Bondi, longtime supporters who continued to help Trump even as he sought to overturn an election. Some played minor roles in supporting the false claims about the 2020 presidential election. Still others have pushed conspiracy theories, often fantastical or debunked, that have helped persuade millions of Republicans that Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has acknowledged he is eyeing a presidential bid, has incensed both Democrats and Republicans over immigrant healthcare, underscoring the delicate political path ahead.

For a second straight year, the Democrat has asked state lawmakers to roll back coverage for some immigrants in the face of federal Medicaid spending cuts and a roughly $3-billion budget deficit that analysts warn could worsen if the AI bubble bursts. Newsom has proposed that the state not step in when, starting in October, the federal government stops providing health coverage to an estimated 200,000 legal residents — comprising asylees, refugees and others.

Progressive legislators and activists said the cost-saving measures are a departure from Newsom’s “health for all” pledge, and Republicans continue to skewer Newsom for using public funds to cover any noncitizens.

Newsom’s latest move would save an estimated $786 million this fiscal year and $1.1 billion annually in future years in a proposed budget of $349 billion, according to the Department of Finance.

State Sen. Caroline Menjivar, one of two Senate Democrats who voted against Newsom’s immigrant health cuts last year, said she worried the governor’s political ambition could be getting in the way of doing what’s best for Californians.

“You’re clouded by what Arkansas is going to think, or Tennessee is going to think, when what California thinks is something completely different,” said Menjivar, who said previous criticism got her temporarily removed from a key budget subcommittee. “That’s my perspective on what’s happening here.”

Meanwhile, Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland criticized Newsom for glossing over the state’s structural deficit, which state officials say could balloon to $27 billion the following year. And he slammed Newsom for continuing to cover California residents in the U.S. without authorization. “He just wants to reinvent himself,” Strickland said.

It’s a political tightrope that will continue to grow thinner as federal support shrinks amid ever-rising healthcare expenses, said Guian McKee, a co-chair of the Health Care Policy Project at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.

“It’s not just threading one needle but threading three or four of them right in a row,” McKee said. Should Newsom run for president, McKee added, the priorities of Democratic primary voters — who largely mirror blue states like California — look very different from those in a far more divided general electorate.

Americans are deeply divided on whether the government should provide health coverage to immigrants without legal status. In a KFF poll last year, a slim majority — 54% — were against a provision that would have penalized states that use their own funds to pay for immigrant healthcare, with wide variation by party. The provision was left out of the final version of the bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump.

Even in California, support for the idea has waned amid ongoing budget problems. In a May survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, 41% of adults in the state said they supported providing health coverage to immigrants without authorization, a sharp drop from the 55% who supported it in 2023.

Trump, Vice President JD Vance, other administration officials, and congressional Republicans have repeatedly accused California and other Democrat-led states of using taxpayer funds on immigrant healthcare, a red-meat issue for their GOP base. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz has accused California of “gaming the system” to receive more federal funds, freeing up state coffers for its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, which has enrolled roughly 1.6 million immigrants without legal status.

“If you are a taxpayer in Texas or Florida, your tax dollars could’ve been used to fund the care of illegal immigrants in California,” he said in October.

California state officials have denied the charges, noting that only state funds are used to pay for general health services to those without legal status because the law prohibits using federal funds. Instead, Newsom has made it a “point of pride” that California has opened up coverage to immigrants, which his administration has noted keeps people healthier and helps them avoid costly emergency room care often covered at taxpayer expense.

“No administration has done more to expand full coverage under Medicaid than this administration for our diverse communities, documented and undocumented,” Newsom told reporters in January. “People have built careers out of criticizing my advocacy.”

Newsom warns the federal government’s “carnival of chaos” passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he said puts 1.8 million Californians at risk of losing their health coverage with the implementation of work requirements, other eligibility rules, and limits to federal funding to states.

Nationally, 10 million people could lose coverage by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Health economists have said higher numbers of uninsured patients — particularly those who are relatively healthy — could concentrate coverage among sicker patients, potentially increasing premium costs and hospital prices overall.

Immigrant advocates say it’s especially callous to leave residents who may have fled violence or survived trafficking or abuse without access to healthcare. Federal rules currently require state Medicaid programs to cover “qualified noncitizens” including asylees and refugees, according to Tanya Broder with the National Immigration Law Center. But the Republican tax-and-spending law ends the coverage, affecting an estimated 1.4 million legal immigrants nationwide.

With many state governors yet to release budget proposals, it’s unclear how they might handle the funding gaps, Broder said.

For instance, Colorado state officials estimate roughly 7,000 legal immigrants could lose coverage due to the law’s changes. And Washington state officials estimate 3,000 refugees, asylees, and other lawfully present immigrants will lose Medicaid.

Both states, like California, expanded full coverage to all income-eligible residents regardless of immigration status. Their elected officials are now in the awkward position of explaining why some legal immigrants may lose their healthcare coverage while those without legal status could keep theirs.

Last year, spiraling healthcare costs and state budget constraints prompted the Democratic governors of Illinois and Minnesota, potential presidential contenders JB Pritzker and Tim Walz, to pause or end coverage of immigrants without legal status.

California lawmakers last year voted to eliminate dental coverage and freeze new enrollment for immigrants without legal status and, starting next year, will charge monthly premiums to those who remain. Even so, the state is slated to spend $13.8 billion from its general fund on immigrants not covered by the federal government, according to Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer.

At a news conference in San Francisco in January, Newsom defended those moves, saying they were necessary for “fiscal prudence.” He sidestepped questions about coverage for asylees and refugees and downplayed the significance of his proposal, saying he could revise it when he gets a chance to update his budget in May.

Kiran Savage-Sangwan, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, pointed out that California passed a law in the 1990s requiring the state to cover Medi-Cal for legal immigrants when federal Medicaid dollars won’t. This includes green-card holders who haven’t yet met the five-year waiting period for enrolling in Medicaid.

Calling the governor’s proposal “arbitrary and cruel,” Savage-Sangwan criticized his choice to prioritize rainy-day fund deposits over maintaining coverage and said blaming the federal government was misleading.

It’s also a major departure from what she had hoped California could achieve on Newsom’s first day in office seven years ago, when he declared his support for single-payer healthcare and proposed extending health insurance subsidies to middle-class Californians.

“I absolutely did have hope, and we celebrated advances that the governor led,” Savage-Sangwan said. “Which makes me all the more disappointed.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that the federal government should “nationalize” elections, repeating — without evidence — his long-running claim that U.S. elections are beset by widespread fraud.

Speaking on a podcast hosted by former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Trump said Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” alleging that voting irregularities in what he called “crooked states” are hurting the GOP.

“The Republican ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump said.

The proposal would clash with the Constitution’s long-standing framework that grants states primary authority over election administration, and underscored Trump’s continued efforts to upend voting rules ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

Trump, for example, lamented that Republicans have not been “tougher” on the issue, again asserting without evidence that he lost the 2020 election because undocumented immigrants voted illegally for Democrats.

“If we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election,” Trump said. “These people were brought to our country to vote and they vote illegally, and it is amazing that the Republicans are not tougher on it.”

In his remarks, the president suggested that “some interesting things” may come out of Georgia in the near future. Trump did not divulge more details, but was probably teasing what may come after the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Ga.

Days after FBI agents descended on the election center, the New York Times reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was with agents at the scene when she called Trump on her cellphone. Trump thanked them for their work, according to the report, an unusual interaction between the president and investigators tied to a politically sensitive inquiry.

In the days leading up to the Georgia search, Trump suggested in a speech during the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, that criminal charges were imminent in connection to what he called a “rigged” 2020 election.

Georgia has been central to Trump’s 2020 claims. That’s where Trump called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2021, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn the state’s results. Raffensperger refused, affirming that a series of reviews confirmed that Democrat Joe Biden had won the state.

Since returning to office a year ago, Trump has continued to aggressively pushed changes to election rules.

He signed an executive order in March to require proof of U.S. citizenship on election forms, but months later a federal judge barred the Trump administration from doing so, saying the order violated the separation of powers.

“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in October.

In Congress, several Republican lawmakers have backed legislation to require people provide proof of citizenship before they register to vote.

Some conservatives are using the elections bill as bargaining chip amid negotiations over a spending package that would end a partial government shutdown that began early Saturday.

“ONLY AMERICAN CITIZENS SHOULD BE VOTING IN AMERICAN ELECTIONS. This is common sense not rocket science,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) wrote on X on Monday as negotiations were continuing.

MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge says she won’t halt the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota as a lawsuit over it proceeds.

Judge Katherine M. Menendez on Saturday denied a preliminary injunction sought in a lawsuit filed this month by state Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

It argued that the Department of Homeland Security is violating constitutional protections. The lawsuit sought a quick order to halt the enforcement action or limit its scope. Lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous.”

The ruling on the injunction focused on the argument by Minnesota officials that the federal government is violating the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which limits the federal government’s powers to infringe on the sovereignty of states. In her ruling, the judge relied heavily on whether that argument was likely to ultimately succeed in court.

The federal government argued that the surge, which it calls Operation Metro Surge, is necessary in its effort to take criminal immigrants off the streets and because federal efforts have been hindered by state and local “sanctuary laws and policies.” State and local officials argued that the surge is political retaliation after the federal government’s initial attempts to withhold federal funding to try to force immigration cooperation failed.

“Because there is evidence supporting both sides’ arguments as to motivation and the relative merits of each side’s competing positions are unclear, the Court is reluctant to find that the likelihood-of-success factor weighs sufficiently in favor of granting a preliminary injunction,” the judge said in the ruling.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi lauded the ruling Saturday on social media, calling it “another HUGE” legal win for the Justice Department.

Federal officers have fatally shot two people on the streets of Minneapolis, Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.

Actor John Leguizamo, a longtime vocal critic of President Trump and his administration, says he’s showing a section of his social media following the door amid the federal government’s relentless crackdown on immigration.

The “Romeo + Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge!” acting veteran, who is Latino, on Wednesday issued a brief and blunt Instagram video message to followers who also support the immigration agency. “If you follow ICE, unfollow me,” he said in his post.

“Don’t come to my shows, don’t watch my movies,” he added. Leguizamo, an Emmy winner, captioned his post: “Abolish ice!”

The actor-comedian, also known for the “Ice Age” films and cult classic “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar,” is among the Hollywood stars vehemently speaking out against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents amid recent killings. An ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good earlier this month in Minneapolis, where Border Patrol agents on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti. An off-duty federal immigration agent fatally shot Keith Porter Jr. in Northridge on Dec. 31. They are among the 20-plus people who have died in a wave of aggressive immigration operations launched by the Trump administration last year.

Fellow actors also using social media to speak out against ICE and other federal immigration agents are Pedro Pascal, Mark Ruffalo and Ayo Edebiri. Musicians including Olivia Rodrigo, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Billie Eilishand Tyler, the Creator have also condemned federal officers.

White House border policy advisor Tom Homan said Thursday during a press conference that street operations in Minneapolis would wind down if agents were allowed into local jails instead and asserted the federal government was not backing down on its aggressive immigration agenda.

“We are not surrendering our mission at all,” he said. “We are not surrendering the president’s mission of immigration enforcement: Let’s make that clear.”

Staff writers Malia Mendez and Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.