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On Wednesday, the Save America Movement announced that it’s putting hundreds of trained volunteers at polling places this fall. The coalition includes Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the American Federation of Teachers. Volunteers include people from all walks of life including clergy, teachers, firefighters, Veterans, and retirees.
The group plans to focus on battleground states with competitive statewide races including Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio—starting with the 20 highest-turnout minority precincts around Atlanta, Detroit, Charlotte, and Cleveland. The program goes from early voting through Election Day.
They’ll be easy to spot, wearing Vote Safe insignia. Their training covers de-escalation, deterrence, and documentation, along with the specific laws governing each state and precinct. No one will be armed.
Over the last year, the same group sent what they called “Liberty Vans”—each staffed by a lawyer, a chaplain, and a camera operator—to follow immigration raids and film what was actually happening. The footage drew national coverage, and now they’re moving that work to the polls.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Tuesday that ICE agents may not patrol polling locations, but could be serving a warrant or answering a threat. Federal law already forbids stationing armed forces at voting sites. Trump ally Steve Bannon called the ICE surge at airports a “test run” and has called for an “up-armored ICE presence” at the polls.
Rev. Al Sharpton said: “If anyone thinks the presence or threat of federal agents will frighten our communities away from the polls, they are badly mistaken.”
The Trump regime tried to force California to bar transgender athletes from girls’ teams for 13 months—threatening federal education money if they didn’t.
The Department of Education had allocated around $44 billion to California’s education department for the year. DOJ sued the state as well as the organization that runs California high school sports in July 2025. To show harm, the DOJ built its case around five transgender kids, tracking their meets and finishing times at each event.
On Monday, Judge Cynthia Valenzuela put an end to the case, dismissing it with prejudice. The regime can’t refile it. They can appeal, and they say they're considering it.
Washington can only attach strings to federal money if it tells states the strings are there first. Nobody ever told California. Valenzuela’s order walks through a decade of the federal government reversing its own position, finding officials “repeatedly gave materially different answers” on what the law required.
Trevor Norcross has a 17-year-old daughter who competes in track and field at Arroyo Grande High—she was one of the five. Norcross said it’s “time to get back to supporting and enjoying girls’ and women’s sports instead of trying to tear them down.”
What Norcross is most relieved about is the fact that girls in California can compete now without facing “the prospect of invasive body inspections if they don’t look feminine enough.”
Forty-four billion dollars in leverage, aimed at five kids who wanted to play. It didn’t work.
At a Florida International University (FIU) event with President Jeanette Nuñez and former pro baseball player Alex Rodriguez, no more than 15 students stood up, faced the audience, and pulled off their sweaters. The shirts underneath read ICE OFF FIU.
They didn’t say anything or carry signs. They stood for three minutes and walked out on their own. Security was in the room the whole time and never asked them to leave.
FIU disciplined seven of them under a rule banning “expressive activities” indoors—one that defines expressive activities as speech “protected under the First Amendment.” The university’s own event director had already told the investigator in writing that the protest “did not disrupt the event.” FIU went forward anyway.
Six were found responsible and ordered to record two-minute videos explaining the regulation and how they’d apply it going forward, re-recorded until administrators were satisfied. Deadline September 4. Miss it and FIU freezes their records—no classes, no financial aid, no transcript, no diploma.
Andrew Caro, a senior whose parents immigrated from Mexico, said he had no intention of apologizing.
The students asked FIU for the police body-camera footage. FIU refused, repeatedly. So they sued, with the ACLU of Florida representing them, and FIU filed that same footage in court as evidence. Judge Jacqueline Becerra watched it and described students doing nothing but “sit, stand, and walk.”
The only claim of disruption anywhere in the record came from a campus detective, saying the students impeded people’s view. Becerra noted it was never part of the disciplinary proceedings at all. It surfaced after the lawsuit.
On August 23, Becerra blocked the rule and stayed every sanction. Those videos were due tomorrow. Since the students fought back, they aren’t anymore.
Trump signed an order in March telling the Postal Service to write rules that would restrict mail ballots. States would have to register in a new USPS portal where they uploaded their mail voters, and got their envelopes pre-approved. The Postal Service could refuse anything that didn’t comply.
Right now, Trump’s scheme is frozen, after Judge Indira Talwani put a stop to it last week. The DOJ, USPS, and twelve Republican-led states asked her to lift the freeze. On Monday, Talwani refused.
On Tuesday, lawyers for the League of Women Voters and a coalition of voting rights groups filed four pages in support of keeping it frozen. That filing included the USPS whistleblower disclosure that we reported on yesterday—in which a federal employee described the Postal Service as sloppily racing to build an untested system.
The whistleblower also laid out that process on a single page, marking two points where the plan completely fails. One of those points was if a clerk hand-scans a sample from a ballot batch, and one barcode doesn’t match, the Postal Service would reject the entire batch and send it back to the state. That could be 10,000 ballots or more.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal said it’s “not just incompetence, it is designed malfunction.”
Talwani hears arguments today on whether to make the freeze last. The order she signed is only good for 14 days. However she rules, the scheme doesn’t get to be secret anymore. A federal worker wrote it down, a senator put it on the record, and civil rights lawyers filed it with the court. They built this thing hoping nobody would see it. Now everybody can.
With only 61 days left until the midterms, Trump is betting that we will run out of steam before he runs out of schemes.
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Onward!
Scott
Are you voting by mail this year, or has all of this pushed you to vote in person?
Those seven students were told to record apology videos or lose their diplomas. What would you have done at age nineteen?
Let me know in the comments!
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It really is wild, Sam. Forcing students to record public humiliation videos just for peaceful, silent presence was a blatant overreach. Huge respect to those students for knowing their rights and standing tall! Talk to you in 30 seconds
It's an interesting problem. They certainly have First Amendment rights protecting them if they have something to say. The question is whether or not they owe an apology to spectators whose view of the game or court they blocked. But it was the school, not the spectators, who were complaining. So it's unclear that they owe the school an apology for anything, or for what.
You bring up a thoughtful legal angle, Fred! Thankfully the court recognized that a brief, peaceful demonstration doesn't strip students of their basic constitutional protections.
The students could have been an interference, and if they were experienced that way, other spectators would have complained (they didn't), or ushers or security would have asked them to stay seated (they didn't). So the school does not have what the law would call "standing" (sorry for the pun) to complain later, on its own, and demand anything.
If, at a classical music concert, a few audience members stood up and made distracting noise, someone would have addressed that at the moment. The conductor would have done that. The idea of coming back to them later, and demanding any kind of concession, would be out of the question. Make a list of who they were, and don't sell them a ticket next time.
Isn’t that why our necks move?
If people are annoyed by a 3 minute view block then they should never attend a concert, game or any spectator activity where people regularly stand up. The fact that blocking a view for a few minutes takes precedence over the rights and dignity of human beings is part of the reason we are in this mess right now.
Spot on, Julie! Perspective and basic human dignity should always outweigh minor momentary inconveniences. Thank you for framing it so clearly!
Such a smart thing that the students went to the ACLU and matters proceeded as they did, with the result you report here. Hear, hear to all the comments above, readers’ observations about this event. ICE OUT definitely is not an unpopular sentiment across our nation. Amen.
Especially at a university that caters to International students!
https://www.fiu.edu/admissions/index.html
On Point, Julie
It wasn’t during a game or on a court but during an event in an auditorium on campus.
https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-dade/federal-judge-rules-in-favor-of-fiu-students-who-sued-university-for-charging-them-with-misconduct-after-anti-ice-protest/
So grateful to these courageous students and for the ruling. To note, FIU prez is a DeSantis appointee who was instrumental in appointing the new interim law school dean, a Trump ally and former personal attorney who was involved in the J6 slush fund debacle. You couldn’t make this stuff up !