Secretary

SANTA FE, N.M. — Democratic-led states alarmed by the prospect of federal immigration officers patrolling the polls during this year’s midterm elections are taking steps to counter what they see as a potential tactic to intimidate voters.

New Mexico this week became the first state to bar armed agents from polling locations in response to President Trump’s immigration crackdown, a step being considered in at least half a dozen other Democratic-led states.

The moves highlight a deep distrust toward the Trump administration from blue states, which have been the target of his aggressive immigration tactics while threatened with military deployments and deep cuts in federal funding. Their concerns were heightened after the president suggested he wants to nationalize U.S. elections, even though the Constitution says it’s the states that run elections.

The Trump administration said it has no plans to deploy immigration agents to polling locations. Last month, the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol told a congressional committee “No, sir” when asked if they had any plans to guard polling places. The Department of Homeland Security’s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, Heather Honey, recently told secretaries of state it “is simply not true” that immigration agents will be at the polls this year.

But a group of eight secretaries of state wants that in writing from the nominee to succeed Kristi Noem as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. In a letter Monday to Trump’s new pick to lead the agency, Markwayne Mullin, the group pressed for assurances “that ICE will not have a presence at polling locations during the 2026 election cycle.”

Federal law already prohibits the deployment of armed federal forces to election locations unless “necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States,” but Democratic lawmakers, election officials and governors remain concerned.

“The fear is that the Trump administration will attempt to evoke a national emergency or execute some other deployment of federal agents or military troops in order to interfere with elections and intimidate voters,” said Connecticut Democratic state Rep. Matt Blumenthal, co-author of a state bill to establish a 250-foot buffer from federal agents at local polls and other restrictions on federal intervention. “And we’re not going to let that happen.”

A potential clash between states and the federal government

Other bills seeking to ban immigration agents at the polls are pending in Democratic-led states, large and small, from California to Rhode Island.

In Virginia, lawmakers are weighing legislation that could prevent federal civil immigration officials from making arrests within 40 feet of any polling place or courthouse. But the provision on polling sites remains under negotiation, and it’s unclear whether it will be in the final bill.

The newly signed law in New Mexico prohibits orders that put any armed person in the “civil, military or naval service of the United States” at local polling locations and related parking areas, or within 50 feet of a monitored ballot box, from the start of early voting.

Under New Mexico’s new law, which takes effect in May and will be in place for the state’s June 2 primary, people who experience intimidation or obstruction at the polls from federal agents or military personnel can file a civil lawsuit seeking relief in state courts. State prosecutors and local and state election officials also can sue, and the courts can apply fines of up to $50,000 per violation.

It also prohibits changes to voting qualifications and election rules and procedures that conflict with New Mexico law, as Trump prods the U.S. Senate to approve a bill to impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements in elections nationwide.

Any state measures intended to counter federal election law will face legal hurdles because of the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution, which says federal law supersedes state law.

“It could set up a direct clash between state governments and the federal government. We don’t know exactly how that’s going to go,” said Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law. “Given the supremacy clause, there’s only so much states can do.”

‘We will hold free and fair elections’

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said her own distrust of the Trump administration in election oversight stems from ongoing Department of Justice efforts to get detailed state voter data without explaining why and Trump’s continuing false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

“Do I believe the federal government and people in the White House? No,” said Lujan Grisham, who terms out of office at the end of 2026.

“We are sending a message to everyone: We will hold free and fair elections, and New Mexicans will be safe in every ballot location and that’s our responsibility,” the Democrat said Tuesday during a news conference. “The Constitution says the states run their elections, and that bill makes that painfully re-clear to the federal government.”

Federal seizure of ballots and election records is a growing concern

New Mexico Republicans, who are in the minority in the legislature, voted in unison against the bill.

“I would question strongly why we have to do this other than just to have to poke the president in the eye,” state GOP Sen. Bill Sharer of Farmington said during floor debate.

State Sen. Katy Duhigg, an Albuquerque Democrat who was a co-sponsor of the legislation, said it’s “better safe than sorry with democracy.” She said she wanted to “make sure that there was some sort of tool that our local law enforcement would have at their disposal if something does happen, if the federal government does in some manner try to interfere with our elections.”

Connecticut’s bill, scheduled for a hearing later this week, also takes aim at federal attempts to seize ballots or other election material. It would require that state officials receive notification of such a move.

Blumenthal said state lawmakers can’t prevent seizures such as the January search by the FBI on an election center in Fulton County, Ga., a Democratic stronghold that includes Atlanta. But he said, “there might be an opportunity for our state attorney general’s office or the secretary of the state’s office to challenge that.”

Lee and Haigh write for the Associated Press. Haigh reported from Hartford, Conn. AP writer Oliva Diaz in Richmond, Va., and David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Mo., contributed to this report.

The pet did a neat trick: Before a room filled with heads of state from across Latin America, Little Marco spoke Spanish.

His owner — well, his soul’s owner at least— grinned and joked, “I think he’s better in Spanish” than in English. Following President Trump, it was Pentagon Pete’s turn to tease Little Marco.

“I only speak American,” Secretary of Defense Hegseth cracked. The auditorium stayed quiet save for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who meekly protested, “I only speak Cuban.”

Trump gave him a pat on the back. Good boy, Marco.

The exchange, which happened over a weekend dominated by the war with Iran, was brief yet said so much about the times Latinos live in. Rubio, the most powerful Latino politician in U.S. history, might as well have been to Trump and Hegseth the Chihuahua that says “Yo quiero Taco Bell.” The man who has played an oversized role in pushing a president who campaigned against costly foreign wars and chaotic regime changes to do both was brought back down to an undignified size.

Little Marco indeed.

Here’s a reminder that no matter how high and mighty you get in Trump’s White House, a Latino is still an exotic “other.”

Tokenizing someone is always an ugly thing — yet Rubio deserves no tears. He has made a career out of wearing his latinidad like a shiny guayabera when convenient, long casting himself as the boy-faced exception to the corrupt, ineffectual Latino politician archetype. That stance has fueled a 27-year career — Florida speaker of the House, U.S. senator, former presidential candidate, secretary of State and national security advisor. That has made many conservatives and more than a few Latinos feel he’s not just capable of a strong White House run but that he could even win were he to do so.

All it cost Rubio was his morals and backbone. All he had to do was roll over.

We Latinos deserve better — and yet we kind of don’t.

The story liberals and conservatives have always told about America’s largest minority is that we would irrevocably change the United States — the former group maintained it would be for the better, the latter insisted we would cause this country’s downfall. Rubio proves that at our worst, Latinos show that in our rush to assimilate and be embraced, we often become the worst kind of Americans.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks as President Trump during a NATO summit in June in the Hague.

(Brendan Smialowski / Pool Photo)

We’re the ones whom the American psyche sees as perpetual invaders, yet we sign up by the thousands for the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies in Trump’s deportation Leviathan. Even as Trump slimed Latinos during his first term and his years out of office, an increasing number of us warmed up to him — surely, he was referring to other Latinos — until Trump captured more of our votes in 2024 than any Republican presidential candidate ever.

It takes a certain type of person to go from child of Cuban immigrants — the favorite son of an exile community that transformed Miami from a retiree haven into one of the capitals of Latin America — to tell European leaders last month that they and the United States “opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.”

It takes the worst kind of Latino.

I called Rubio a vendido in a previous columna after he cheered on the extrajudicial capture of Venezuelan despot Nicolás Maduro. He’s definitely still a sellout — what else to call someone who once fiercely opposed Trump but now sidles up to him like a cockapoo? But the most pathetic part about Rubio’s rise is that his followers see him as the culmination of the long-held dreams of Latinos that things would become better for our ancestral Latin American countries and ourselves once one of us was charge.

Alas, no. He’s living up to a realpolitik maxim attributed to various Latin American caudillos: For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.

Strongmen like El Salvador and Argentina presidents Nayib Bukele and Javier Milei get coddled and receive foreign aid; college students on study visas who criticize the Trump administration get nabbed by la migra. Rubio is overseeing a foreign policy that currently has the U.S. dictating how Venezuela will be governed, is bombing Iran like the country was a game of Pachinko and is slowly choking Cuba into collapse. He’s the unholy child of Bush-era neoconservativism and MAGA — and Rubio is just getting started.

That’s how he set himself up to be used as Latino punch line by Trump and Hegseth. The setting: the inaugural meeting at a Trump golf course near Miami of the Shield of the Americas, a coalition of Western Hemisphere countries ostensibly assembled to fight drug cartels. It resembled one of those lesser super-groups in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — you got Costa Rica instead of Mexico, Bolivia instead of Brazil. The group even has a crappy logo. You know how unserious the confab was when Trump’s point person for this is Kristi Noem, whom he literally had just fired as Homeland Security secretary.

After Trump rambled through a short speech, it was Rubio’s time to offer remarks. Here was a chance for the secretary of State, the man the Atlantic recently called “bright and well spoken,” to channel his inner Simón Bolivar or José Martí. The secretary of State thanked everyone present in English, but not before praising Trump for his “bold leadership” and bragging that the president is “one of the most historic figures in American history.”

Then Rubio looked back at his beaming master.

President Trump signs a proclamation committing to countering cartel criminal activity at the Shield of the Americas Summit on Saturday at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla.

(Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press)

“You all right if I — “ he began before Trump cut him off with a magnanimous, “Sure. Please.”

That’s when Little Marco spoke in flawless Spanish. Rubio’s comments weren’t much different from what he said in English, save his remark that what they all planned to do by following Trump “will make future generations grateful for the work we are doing today.”

That last statement sums up Rubio. For centuries, Latin America has yearned for prosperity and peace free from American interference. This hope has fueled revolutions, music, film, culture and all the best things the region has produced only to have U.S.-backed tyrants crush those movements.

That’s the torch Rubio now proudly carries.

“All my life I’ve been in a hurry to get to my future,” he wrote in his 2013 memoir, “American Son.” Rubio’s future is now. And our present — not just Latinos, but all Americans — is worse because of it.

Dios mío.

Lutnick’s relationship with the late financier and sex offender has come under scrutiny after files revealed closer ties than previously known.

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has agreed to give testimony to lawmakers about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the head of a committee investigating the late sex offender has said.

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein in New York for more than a decade, “proactively agreed” to provide a transcribed interview to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, panel chair James Comer said on Tuesday.

“I commend his demonstrated commitment to transparency and appreciate his willingness to engage with the Committee. I look forward to his testimony,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said on X.

Axios, which first reported the commerce secretary’s intention to testify, quoted Lutnick as saying he had done nothing wrong and he wished to “set the record straight”.

Lutnick’s relationship with Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges, has come under mounting scrutiny after he appeared to misrepresent the extent of his associations with the notorious financier.

In a podcast interview last year, Lutnick said he decided to “never be in the room” with Epstein again following an uncomfortable encounter at the sex offender’s Manhattan penthouse in 2005.

But files released by the Justice Department earlier this year showed that Lutnick met and communicated with Epstein for years after the reported 2005 encounter, and the commerce secretary later acknowledged that he visited the financier’s private island of Little Saint James in 2012.

Comer said on Tuesday that he had also sent letters to seven individuals seeking written testimony about their knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, including Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, private equity investor Leon Black, and top Goldman Sachs lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler.

Gates, Black and Ruemmler have repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, or having knowledge of his abuse of women and girls.

The committee’s requests for testimony come after former US President Bill Clinton and his wife, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appeared before lawmakers last week to answer questions about their ties to Epstein.

Bill Clinton told the committee he did nothing wrong and “saw nothing that ever gave me pause” while interacting with Epstein.

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers she had no recollection of encountering Epstein and that she never “flew on his plane or visited his island home or offices”.

Feb. 27 (UPI) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Israel Monday and Tuesday to discuss Iran and other issues, the State Department announced Friday.

The visit comes amid concern that the United States will attack Iran, despite continued negotiation between the two. On Thursday, the U.S. embassy in Israel told its staff that they could leave because of “safety risks,” though there is no emergency.

“Persons may wish to consider leaving Israel while commercial flights are available,” the State Department said in its new guidance. “In response to security incidents and without advance notice, the U.S. Embassy may further restrict or prohibit U.S. government employees and their family members from traveling to certain areas of Israel, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the West Bank.”

CNBC reported Friday that Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi will meet Friday with Vice President JD Vance and other officials in Washington for “previously unreported talks in an effort to stave off war with Iran.”

Al-Busaidi has mediated talks between American and Iranian officials to ease tensions over President Donald Trump‘s demands that Iran abandon its nuclear program.

Rubio’s visit to Israel is to “discuss a range of regional priorities including Iran, Lebanon and ongoing efforts to implement President Trump’s 20-Point Peace Plan for Gaza,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement.

Democrats are speaking out against a potential strike.

“The American people are still waiting for the strategic justification for a war with Iran that puts thousands of American personnel across the region in harm’s way,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said on X. “What is the evidence of an imminent threat?”

Trump said in his State of the Union speech Tuesday that he is still planning to work the differences out diplomatically.

“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy, but one thing is certain: I will never allow the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror — which they are by far — to have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

While Kim has remained at the top of North Korean leadership, the party congress’s presidium – its executive committee – has been reshuffled since the last meeting in 2021. More than half of its 39 members have been replaced, according to state media.