wrongly

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s election integrity strategy is unlawful and can no longer be used.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans’ personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program “knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”

The decision is a major legal setback for President Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system, which critics had referred to as an unlawful centralized federal database of voter information, had been a key pillar of the second election executive order the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain.

“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,” James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, said of the ruling in a social media post.

The department referred to his post as its comment on the ruling. The Department of Justice did not immediately return a request for comment.

The SAVE program was created under an immigration law mandating that Homeland Security help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. At least 25 states used it to check their voter rolls since April 2025, after the Trump administration significantly expanded its search abilities. Since then, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program, but critics worry it could end up purging valid voters from the rolls.

The plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and five unnamed U.S. citizens, had alleged the revamped SAVE program violated Americans’ privacy and voting rights. The groups also alleged the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws by ignoring transparency requirements about the changes to the system.

“The agencies were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification,” the judge wrote. “So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”

Plaintiffs attorney Nikhel Sus told the court during the October hearing that naturalized citizens face a greater risk of unlawfully being purged from voter rolls.

“They are uniquely vulnerable to errors in the database,” said Sus, an attorney for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Sus said Monday he sees Sooknanan’s ruling as an “across the board victory” and noted the plaintiffs were pleased the judge’s ruling reinforced their argument that the federal government doesn’t have implied authority to freely share sensitive data across agencies.

Swenson and Hussein write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York.

An Argentine television presenter has resigned after falsely reporting that the father of Lionel Messi had died during Argentina’s first World Cup game.

Florencia Pena made the claim during a live broadcast on Argentine streaming channel Luzu TV following Argentina’s opening group game win over Algeria.

“I don’t want to bring bad news, but Messi’s father has just passed away. It was sudden. In the middle of the World Cup,” Pena said while hosting the show.

The report quickly spread on social media before Pena clarified that the information had not been confirmed.

The Messi family later issued a statement confirming that the player’s father, Jorge Messi, is receiving medical treatment for an undisclosed health condition.

The statement said the 68-year-old is under medical supervision and recovering, while criticising speculation surrounding his health and calling for privacy during a difficult period.

Pena apologised publicly and said the information had been passed to her during the programme as if it was verified news.

“I apologise to the Messi family,” she said in a statement. “I am deeply ashamed to have been involved in this mistake.”

The 51-year-old television personality and actress now says she was given unverified information.

“I have to clarify that this false information was given to me live on air as if it had been checked by the show’s production team, and I trusted it,” Pena wrote on social media on Thursday.

“Even so, I take responsibility for being part of the mistake and that is why I decided to step aside and end my participation in Luzu.

“I apologise again from the heart; I was wrong.”

Luzu TV also apologised and announced disciplinary action following the incident, saying the dissemination of sensitive information without proper verification was unacceptable.

Nicolas Occhiato, the show’s host and producer, said: “We at Luzu TV deeply regret what happened on the air during the program El Show de Verano. For our channel, the broadcast of sensitive information without proper prior verification is unacceptable.

“For this reason, Luzu TV management has decided to terminate the employment of all those responsible, and Florencia Pena has decided to step down.

“We reaffirm our commitment to responsible, respectful, and rigorous journalism.”

The controversy came after Messi scored a hat-trick in Argentina’s 3-0 win over Algeria. The 38-year-old appeared emotional during the match and later said he had experienced “difficult days” for personal reasons unrelated to football.

The false report triggered widespread criticism across Argentina, with many supporters condemning the failure to verify the information before it was broadcast.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei called it “Trash talk” on X, saying that Pena’s “outrageous and unscrupulous, unverified statements on a streaming channel, which would still be outrageous even if the information had been true, since they concern a citizen’s private life, remind us of the impunity with which some individuals believe they can operate simply because they have a microphone or a pen in their hand”.

Argentina continue their World Cup campaign against Austria on Monday (18:00 BST).

It’s entirely possible — as hard as it may be to conceive in these deeply tribal, us-vs.-them times — for two competing notions to be true.

Tina Peters personally enriched herself and betrayed the public trust by perpetrating a harebrained scheme to “prove” the 2020 election in Mesa County, Colo., was rigged against President Trump. The former county clerk and MAGA warrior deserved to go to jail.

But the nine-year sentence she received was unduly harsh and, according to an appeals court decision, improperly meted out as punishment for the false and reckless public statements Peters made, a clear violation of her 1st Amendment rights. The court kicked the case back for resentencing.

That’s when Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, stepped in.

And stepped in it.

Over the strenuous objection of fellow Democrats and many Republicans — including Peters’ prosecutor and a majority of Colorado’s election clerks — Polis commuted her sentence, clearing the way for Peters’ parole on June 1 after less than two years in prison.

Which just goes to show three wrongs don’t make a right.

Peters, 70, was convicted on multiple criminal counts, four of them felonies, for conspiring to let an unauthorized person access supposedly compromised voting equipment. She then lied to cover up her actions.

Trump carried Mesa County, a conservative stronghold, by nearly 30 percentage points, making Peters’ actions — apart from illegal — unaccountably stupid. But her conniving made her a belle of Mar-a-Lago and a celebrity on the election-denial circuit, jetting around the country and spewing cockamamie conspiracy theories.

Trump loudly agitated for her release.

His corrupted Justice Department sought to get Peters sprung from Colorado prison, presumably to set her loose from a federal facility. The president issued a symbolic “pardon,” though Peters’ conviction on state charges put her beyond his crooked reach. Trump insulted and belittled Polis, suggesting, among other things, he “rot in hell.” More significantly, the vengeful president waged economic war against Colorado.

Among the retributive acts, Trump slashed federal funds earmarked for the state, closed a climate research center in Boulder and moved the U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Alabama.

Polis, who has a broad libertarian streak, insisted his freeing of Peters was not a capitulation to Trump, but rather a matter of principle, which seems plausible to the extent the governor could have anticipated the unshirted hell he’s gotten from fellow Democrats.

Among the great many infuriated by Polis’ decision are Colorado’s two U.S. senators, as well as other vocal critics up and down the ballot. (One of those indignant senators is Michael Bennet, who is running to replace Polis.) There have been calls, within his own party, to investigate and impeach the governor, who had been spoken of as a potential presidential candidate in 2028.

“He was aiming for a national profile,” said Floyd Ciruli, a pollster who’s been taking soundings of Colorado voters for decades. “This makes it much more difficult.”

Given Democrats’ molten outrage, that seems like an understatement.

The judge who sentenced Peters in October 2024 was unsparing.

“You’re as defiant … a defendant as this court has ever seen,” District Judge Matthew Barrett scolded her. “You are as privileged as they come and you used that privilege to obtain power, a following and fame. You are no hero…. You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

Amen.

The problem, according to the Colorado Court of Appeals, was that Barrett wrongly punished Peters not just for her illegal actions but for speaking out about alleged election fraud.

“Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud,” the three-judge panel wrote in a unanimous April decision. “It was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud.”

The judges — all Democratic appointees — upheld Peters’ conviction and denied her request to transfer the case from Barrett. They ordered him to come up with a new sentence.

And that’s where Polis, who placed Barrett on the bench, should have let things alone.

Instead, the governor interceded and essentially cut Peters’ sentence in half.

“The crimes you were convicted of are very serious and you deserve to spend time in prison,” Polis wrote in his commutation letter. “However, this is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes.”

In response, Peters thanked Polis, apologized and expressed contrition.

“I made mistakes, and for those I am sorry,” Peters wrote in a statement addressed to the governor. “I have learned and grown during my time in prison and going forward I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”

We’ll see about that. If Peters clambers back aboard Mike Lindell’s crazy plane — he of MyPillow and election denial fame — we’ll know Polis was duped.

It’s easy to see his actions as surrendering to Trump. If so, Polis’ cave-in was pointless. The president is a bully to his core, always demanding more.

But if you take the governor at his word, and his actions weren’t meant as appeasement, what he did was bad nonetheless. He emulated one of Trump’s worst habits, short-circuiting a well-established, independent process by substituting his own headstrong judgment.

Pride, the saying goes, comes before a fall. In Polis’ case, so does arrogance.