Meanwhile in Georgia

 

Trump getting ready for 2026 and 2028

Still litigating the 2020 election. Rewriting history is important to them.

[T]he Department of Justice raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election office and seized ballots and other materials related to that election. The raid followed a failed attempt to have a federal judge order the materials turned over as part of a civil case.

[...]

Forget the fact that Trump and his allies filed, and lost, eight cases aimed at throwing out the results. In Trump’s mind, the facts are irrelevant. He is only concerned with his false narrative that he was the victim in 2020.

[...]

None of this is a coincidence. It is a strategic effort to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 election. Never mind that Georgia conducted two full recounts — one by machine and another by hand.

[...]

The government obtained a search warrant listing specific federal crimes that a partisan U.S. attorney in Missouri is apparently investigating.

We don’t yet know who the target of the investigation is, but we can expect it will be aimed at inflicting maximum damage.

[...]

Last week in Davos, [Trump] pointed directly to what he was doing:

“The 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That’s probably breaking news.”

[...]

If Trump can use the DOJ to seize ballots from a 2020 election office, he will believe he can do the same everywhere in the country in 2026.

[...]

While we don’t yet know what was presented to the magistrate judge who approved the Fulton County search warrant, recent experience shows the possibility that it contained misstatements.

[...]

With Supreme Court-conferred immunity and a GOP-controlled Congress, the question we must confront is this: Who is going to stop him?

  Democracy Docket

 

UPDATE 01/31/2026:

Trumpland

 This is an outrageous story among outrageous stories of Trump's secret police.

Just before noon local time on Sept. 11, more than 300 South Korean nationals took off on a Korean Air flight from Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

[...]

The workers had been detained for nearly a week following a sweeping Sept. 4 immigration raid at the HL-GA battery plant currently under construction near Savannah.

[...]

About 475 people were arrested in one of the largest immigration raids during Donald Trump's presidency. Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, a Georgia-based civil rights organization, said other detained workers were from China, Japan, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador and Venezuela.

[...]

The South Korean foreign minister said in a Sept. 10 X post that he sought assurances that the detained workers would be allowed to promptly return to South Korea without being physically restrained. U.S. immigration authorities routinely handcuff and shackle immigrants on deportation flights.

[...]

President Trump had offered to let the South Korean workers stay in the United States, hoping they would train American employees, South Korean officials said. The offer apparently delayed the workers' departure by a day. Only one of the Korean workers decided to stay in America.

[...]

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun met Sept. 10, where Rubio said the United States welcomed South Korean investments in the country and sought to "deepen cooperation on this front," according to Tommy Pigott, a principal deputy spokesperson for the State Department.

  USA Today

The plant is part of a 2022 agreement between Hyundai and the state of Georgia to build the company’s first U.S. factory dedicated to manufacturing batteries and electric vehicles. The immigration raid has stopped construction of the 2,900-acre EV battery plant that is expected to employ up to 8,500 people, CNN reported.

South Korean leaders, including President Lee Jae Myung, have denounced the raid, calling it "unjust infringements on the activities of our people and businesses."

[...]

When PolitiFact asked about their status, the Department of Homeland Security did not answer the question. Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations in Georgia and Alabama, said at a Sept. 5 press conference that the arrested workers crossed the U.S. border illegally, violated or overstayed their visas, or had entered the United States under a visa waiver program that prohibited them from working.

[...]

The business activities permitted under a B-1 visa include consulting with business associates, attending conventions or conferences, and negotiating contracts.

[...]

B-1 visa holders cannot work full-time jobs in the United States, and they cannot be paid by a U.S. company.

People coming to the United States on a B-1 visa for those purposes must further have unique skills that are considered necessary for a company to fulfill a contract’s obligations. Visa holders can’t perform any assembly or construction work, for example, but they can supervise or train workers to do that work.

[...]

B-1 visa holders can also enter the United States "to install, service, or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery purchased from a company outside the United States or to train U.S. workers to perform such services," according to a State Department manual about B visas.

[...]

South Korea’s foreign ministry said it has told U.S. officials about difficulties its nationals face to get visas.

"We emphasized to major U.S. figures that such visas are essential for the short-term stay of Korean professionals who are needed for the initial operation of factories and for training local staff when our companies expand to the U.S.," the foreign ministry said in a statement to NBC News.

[...]

Immigration lawyer Charles Kuck told PolitiFact he is representing 12 of the detained people, some of whom are Korean. He said some of his clients entered the United States using either a business visa or the visa waiver program that South Korea participates in. These programs allow people to legally enter the country for a limited time and perform specific business activities. But people can’t work or be paid by U.S. companies while under these immigration statuses.

Kuck said his Korean clients had been in the United States for no more than 45 days, an allowable period of time under these programs.

Kuck also told The Associated Press that the South Korean workers are engineers and specialized equipment installers who were helping set up or repair equipment at the joint plant for Hyundai and LG Energy Solution. The plant will manufacture electric vehicle batteries, which require machines that are not made in the United States, according to Kuck. Kuck added that it would take three to five years to train U.S. workers to install or repair the plant’s equipment, which is why workers have to travel from abroad to install or repair the plant’s equipment.

[...]

Immigration officials gave the detainees two options, accept deportation with a five-year reentry ban, or stand a monthslong trial while remaining in detention, according to Yonhap, a South Korean news agency.

  Politifact

We've seen forcing detainees to drink like dogs before. In "Alligator Alcatraz".  Trump's gestapo would have been at home in Auschwitz.

From a Korean publication:

The US could have resolved this visa issue diplomatically by giving Korea advance notice as an ally. Yet, the crackdown — complete with helicopters and armored vehicles, as if to gleefully flaunt their power — can only be explained as a political performance.

[...]

The Department of Homeland Security boasted that the raid was “the largest single-site enforcement operation in [its] history,” and Immigration and Customs Enforcement even brazenly released footage of the operation — which clearly risks human rights violations — as if to flaunt these arrests as their achievement.

[...]

While many would have you believe that the fiasco involving over 300 Korean workers being arrested and detained by US immigration authorities has been resolved by allowing the workers to “voluntarily depart” back to Korea, this is far from the truth. Korea as a nation was deeply shocked to witness our workers, who had traveled to the US to work at the request of American investors, shackled at their hands and feet with chains. This barbaric incident will leave a lasting stain on Korea-US relations.

The mass arrests are undoubtedly a wake-up call, a major rupture that opens our eyes to what is happening in the US at this moment. We must heed this warning to close the loopholes and traps in our investment projects with the US.

[...]

To understand what’s at the core of this situation, we must revisit the “Make America Great Again” movement championed by US President Donald Trump. MAGA represents a reactionary movement by white evangelical forces seeking to revert America to a time before the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Its core supporters are low-income, poorly educated white Americans and evangelical Protestants. [...] Trump has incited them to channel their anger toward the established elite and “outsiders,” such as people of color, undocumented immigrants, and Muslims.

[...]

His slogan of “Make America Great Again” would be phrased more accurately as “Make White America Great Again.” His insistence on imposing a 50% tariff specifically on steel and aluminum stems from the fact that white, Protestant populations are concentrated in the American Rust Belt.

[...]

This incident should prompt us in Korea to comprehensively reassess our investment projects in the US. We agreed to a tariff deal during a transitional period when President Lee Jae Myung had just taken office. Trump’s aggressive tactics forced us to follow Japan’s lead, but we must now take a cold, hard look at the specifics of what we agreed to. The US made outrageous demands on Japan: execute US$550 billion in investments within Trump’s term, provide funds within 45 days if Trump orders it, and hand over 50%-90% of profits to the US. Reports say the US is now making identical demands of us.

Following the footsteps of Japan, the world’s third-largest economy and a quasi-reserve currency nation, could poison our own economy. Rather than yielding to America’s unreasonable demands to avert an immediate crisis, the government must clearly distinguish what we can and cannot do and negotiate with the US.

[...]

Declining industries inevitably relocate to emerging nations over time. Even in Korea, we face difficulties in reviving such industries. How much more challenging would it be for the US, where production costs are at least 30% higher than ours, and over two decades of hollowing-out in manufacturing have collapsed the industrial ecosystem? Trump is dreaming a delusional fantasy of using imperial might to forcibly mobilize allies and reverse this trend. To make matters worse, treating allied workers who are trying their best to assist in realizing this pipe dream as if they are slaves of a vassal state will jeopardize even those projects that had some potential. We’re currently watching the US foolishly shoot itself in the foot.

  Hankyoreh

US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau on Sunday expressed regret over the recent detention of hundreds of South Korean workers in Georgia.

Landau, in Seoul for a Korea-US vice foreign ministerial meeting, said that the 316 South Koreans who returned home Friday on a chartered jet after being detained in Georgia will face no disadvantage when re-entering the US, according to South Korea’s foreign ministry.

  Bloomberg

You think they're coming back?

UPDATE 08:59 am:

UPDATE 09/17/2025:

Labor policy analyst Sam Peak: “It's now clear that the Hyundai immigration raid was an operational mistake. A big reason why this mistake happened is because the agents who raided this plant have no experience in worksite enforcement. They previously worked on high priority counter-terrorism and child sex trafficking cases, but were reassigned to work on these low priority enforcement cases to help boost the administration's deportation numbers.”

“Because these agents did not know what they were doing, they arrested hundreds of Koreans who were legally authorized to help install equipment at the Hyundai plant in what became the largest raid in US history. Meanwhile, cases involving terror threat investigations, child trafficking, and other transnational crimes are being deprioritized.”

  Meidas Touch

 

Cue the MAGA ridicule

 

Just what Mamdani is proposing for New York.  Let's see if this gets the same ridicule.

Fighting fire with fire

 

I guess both sides will now be defying court orders, so....do we have laws any more?

Voter suppression in Georgia

Red states (and the federal government) will be going hammer and tongs at voting rights before the mid-terms in 2026.

On Tuesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger continued to burnish his anti-voter credentials by initiating a new purge of as many as 480,000 voters. The secretary of state, once celebrated for refusing Trump's demand that he “find” 11,780 nonexistent votes, has since gone all-in on MAGA voter suppression.

Not to be outdone, on Wednesday, the far-right dominated Georgia State Election Board passed a 3-2 resolution asking for help from the Trump administration in investigating the 2020 election results in Fulton County. That’s right — the 2020 election results.

Previous attempts to investigate Fulton County have found no evidence of fraud or serious irregularity.

  Democracy Docket

Aside from simply currying favor with the Great Orange Leader, I assume they're wanting to say that, since the 2020 election was stolen, Dear Leader should get a third term. Or something like that, so that the Supreme Court can have a reason, however bogus, to allow that to happen.

Meanwhile in Atlanta

 

No surprise

I would be surprised if she keeps her job .  She earned it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Elsewhere

In Georgia, the pro-Putin “Dream Party” is falling. In Romania, Putin’s puppets have been exposed and elections invalidated. Damascus has fallen, and Syria’s Assad has been toppled. Putin looks weaker than ever. Trump looked like a bumbling fool at the Notre Dame Cathedral in France as Macron showed what leadership looks like, bringing an energized Zelensky into a photo op with Trump. It feels like everything is happening everywhere all at once.

  Meidas Touch

Trump's fall guy?

And so it begins

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They can't win if they don't cheat

Don't wait

And when the election day votes are counted before the mail-in ballots, Trump is going to once again claim victory and then claim fraud when overnight the totals change.  Just like last time.

Election fraud!

Not that this will matter to MAGA.

Good news for Georgians

I don't think this one can go to the Supreme Court because states are responsible for the methods of holding elections.

Good lord, Fani

Sorry they didn't take her off the Trump Georgia RICO case back when they learned about her affair with one of her attorneys. But this isn't about that case...

The slowly moving YSL RICO case against rapper Young Thug and several other co-defendants, already beset by secret meetings between the prosecution and the court to such an extent that the case was taken away from Fulton County’s chief judge, was a source of controversy again Friday, this time because of an email DA Fani Willis sent (D).

Early on in the Friday proceedings, Douglas Weinstein, an attorney for rapper Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, fumed that Willis sent an email to the court and others on Thursday morning unbeknownst to the defense.

[...]

“I appreciate you forwarding to us the ex parte communications that you received from Madam DA Fani Willis. Given the sensitivity and the history in this case of ex parte meetings or maybe communications, would you just please request the state — I understand what was probably behind that communications, and of course it is great for a boss to buck up and underling who has perhaps been attacked or maligned,” Weinstein told Judge Paige Reese Whitaker. “But I don’t believe that — and I don’t think the court does either — that the court should have been copied on that communications.”

[...]

Law&Crime has obtained the email thread Weinstein spoke of, and it shows that an individual in Germany first sent a lengthy email bashing prosecutor Adriane Love and cc’ing others, including Judges Reese and Glanville.

[...]

As it turns out, DA Willis took it upon herself to respond and defend Love — encouraging her to “ignore the haters” — while replying all to everyone already on the email thread, including the trial judge.

  MSN

Not only does she show again very, very poor judgment, she shows carelessness - or worse, ignorance - in email etiquette.

After Willis replied all, the judge noticed and alerted defense counsel.

[...]

Weinstein responded to say that while he didn’t believe the Willis email would sway the judge in any way, it was nonetheless inappropriate.

“It shouldn’t be happening. Yup,” the judge said.

[...]

Weinstein asked the judge to tell the state it’s past time for prosecutors to stop communicating with the court outside of the presence of the defense. Reese didn’t seem pleased that this even needed to be said.

“It’s a shame that the court would even have to say something like that, but um — can you all please communicate to everybody in the DA’s office to not have any sort of ex parte communications with the court?” the judge said.

[...]

Reese [...] agreed it would be a good idea to enter the Willis email into the record.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Assume it's good news for Democrats

Shattered is right.  Their previous record (2020) was 136,000 ballots on the first day.

Go, Georgia!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Good news in Georgia

I wonder how long it will take the election deniers to appeal.

UPDATE 10/16/2024:

No appeal necessary.  This is only a temporary injunction blocking the rule while it goes through the court system.

The September 20 rule requires that after the polls close on Election Day, three poll officers must unseal and open each scanner ballot box and remove the paper ballots and sort them into stacks of 50 ballots to make sure the ballots match the figures recorded on the precinct poll pads, ballot marking devices, and scanner recap forms.

The poll officer must then document any inconsistency along with “any corrective measures taken,” though it doesn’t say what those measures should be.

[...]

The judge wrote that introducing an unknown and untested rule at the “11th-and-one-half hour” affecting more than 7,500 poll workers was guaranteed to introduce “administrative chaos” that was “entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the State Election Board) to ensure that our elections are fair, legal and orderly.”

[...]

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had opposed the rule when it was approved, saying his office wouldn’t have time to issue guidelines or train poll workers to implement the rule, according to Tuesday’s ruling.

[...]

The rule also likely exceeded the SEB’s authority and violated Georgia’s administrative procedure laws, the judge concluded.

  Daily Beast

That's just a speed bump.

UPDATE 10/16/2024:

Shattered is right.  Their previous record (2020) was 136,000 ballots on the first day.

Go, Georgia!

SCOTUS: when they're needed, they stay silent

The Supreme Court decided not to hear arguments in a case involving Texas that could have provided an answer about whether a state abortion ban conflicts with a federal emergency care law.

The decision is a significant victory for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and comes just three months after the court dismissed a similar case involving Idaho, a move that was criticized as a preelection punt that offered no clarity on the issue.

Dismissing the Idaho case did not resolve the underlying legal questions, so the decision not to hear arguments in the Texas case was unexpected.

  The Hill

I don't know. I expect them to do the worst possible thing these days.

The Texas case centers on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires federally funded hospitals to provide stabilizing care to emergency room patients no matter their ability to pay.

The Biden administration invoked EMTALA in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The administration said state laws or mandates that employ a more restrictive definition of an emergency medical condition are preempted by the federal statute.

Texas sued the administration shortly after the guidance was issued, arguing the law was improperly applied, and the administration did not follow the appropriate rulemaking process.

A lower court ruled in favor of Texas, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed.

Oh, well, my guess is they would have upheld those decisions anyway.

This way, they don't have to have the negative headlines.

And in related news...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Good news

May be temporary.