The Constitution is not ambiguous about who controls the power of the purse, but for the second year in a row, the president is standing in the way. The president has announced that he is withholding $810 million in congressionally approved funding from various agencies, including a $567 million from programs that provide “services to refugees, asylees, and other non-citizens.”

Regardless of where the money is going, the president simply does not have the power that he is claiming here. Instead of working with Congress to change the budgeting priorities of the federal government, Trump is simply asserting that he alone can control how the tax money of every American is spent. That is not how our system of government is designed to work, and it’s up to Congress to reassert its authority over every aspect of the budget.

Todd Blanche is now the Attorney General of the United States.

Blanche has served as a willing agent of Trump’s retaliatory agenda, overseeing inquiries into Governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Adam Schiff, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, and former FBI Director James Comey. Blanche bragged about the DOJ purging lawyers who worked on January 6 prosecutions and personally signed off on the $1.8 billion dollar “anti-weaponization” fund as part of a settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS.

As The New York Times describes, Blanche’s confirmation “represented a powerful endorsement by Congress of the philosophy that has guided him under a meddling, demanding boss — that he has a constitutional obligation to execute every lawful White House order, even if it shatters longstanding policy and rule-of-law norms, or contradicts what he thinks is right.”

Blanche was a featured speaker at the Republican mid-term convention in Texas. If the Attorney General had any shred of apolitical status left, that speech is likely the end of it.

Heartbreaking reporting from The New York Times spotlights Haitian immigrants who have been deported from the country following the end of Temporary Protected Status for many living in the U.S. These deportees are arriving in the Haitian capital of Cap Haitien, many reportedly without any money or possessions that could help them find lodging, food, or a permanent home. “They didn’t give me back my passport, and my passport cost me $600!” Natacha Antoine, a former nurse’s aide, said. “I have no problem that they want to send us home. Send us home! But treat us like human beings.”

Haiti, which the State Department advises Americans to avoid traveling to, is just one of many dangerous places the administration has been deporting people this summer. Some deportees are being returned to countries they are not from and have no tie to, like those sent to the Central African Republic, who are also reporting dangerous conditions. “We cannot leave, we don’t have documents and we’re suffering and missing our families, in a continent we don’t know,” Yasmany Moreno de Armas, a Cuban immigrant, told CBS News. Even as the administration has embroiled itself in other foreign entanglements, these deportations continue apace, and without any respect for the humanity of those being sent to dangerous, sometimes unfamiliar places.

On Sept. 25, the Supreme Court allowed states to use an expanded version of the federal SAVE database to check voter citizenship status. While this is an unwelcome development, the ruling cannot trigger mass voter removals before the midterm elections. Federal law strictly prohibits systematic, bulk voter purges within 90 days of a federal election. Because we are well inside that quiet period, it is illegal for states to run mass roll checks or conduct broad voter removals before November.

That said, voters, particularly naturalized citizens, must stay vigilant. The SAVE database is voluntary and deeply flawed for election administration. While it can confirm citizenship for some, it cannot prove someone is not a citizen. Past attempts to use SAVE repeatedly produced false positives, frequently flagging naturalized U.S. citizens whose records simply had not been updated.

Verify your registration today, especially if you are a naturalized citizen or live in states like Florida, Iowa, Indiana, or Ohio where database checks have been active. To check your specific registration status or locate official election contact info, visit Vote.gov or consult the NASS State Election Director Directory. If you receive a letter from local election officials asking you to affirm your citizenship, do so. Do not ignore it. If you have questions or need free legal guidance, call 866-OUR-VOTE.

The best response to these attempted election takeovers is preparation and participation. In addition to checking your registration status, make plans to vote early, and track your ballot if you vote by mail.

President Trump has continued to escalate his war with the media, announcing in mid-September that he would be removing reporters from MSNow, Politico, and CNN from his press pools. Trump said that reporting from outlets he doesn’t like is “a threat to democracy.”

In response, all three outlets have sued to maintain their access to the White House, and all of the major TV networks have suspended their participation in the daily press pool in solidarity. This attempt to deny journalists access to the president is designed to make it more difficult for members of the media to question the president and his staff, and to hold them accountable. It’s also part of a broader pattern of attacks on the media during his second term, which have come largely from the FCC.

Thankfully, major media outlets have responded with a united front, reminding a president who reportedly spends hours a week watching himself on television that he relies on their cameras for that coverage.

On Sept. 20, an ICE agent shot and wounded Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan man, in North Austin. His attorney has said that, following the shooting, Garces Perez was sent to a detention facility more than 100 miles away “with a bullet in his back without pain medication” and “slept overnight in a processing center without a bed.”

CNN has reported that ICE and CBP agents have shot at least 20 people, eight of them fatally, during this term. The presence of ICE in cities across the country has fomented this level of instability and violence. It might not be the stated goal of these deployments, but evidence suggests that, at least in the first two years of Trump’s term, this violence is an inevitable outcome of the mass deportations that were core to the president’s 2024 campaign. These ICE raids are stoking violence, and the president shows no signs of changing course.

Ahead of the midterm elections, the president is using taxpayer money to pay for a series of television commercials that are nearly indistinguishable from campaign ads. In one, he can be heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.” The ad is factually questionable, but even more jarringly, it’s coming from money that Congress appropriated for border security.

The White House has defended using taxpayer money on these advertisements, describing them as “public service announcements.” The reality, however, is that these ads are designed to promote the president and his administration and are overtly political.

What’s more, there are dozens of ways that the administration, or the party in power more broadly, could use this as an opening salvo in a broader push to fund campaign ads with public funds. American taxpayers do not give their money to the government so that the government can promote themselves to the American people. It’s blatant propaganda, and it’s illegal.