“As an adjudicated insurrectionist, Trump is an illegitimate president according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and therefore every official act as president will be illegitimate.”
–Mike Zonta, co-editor of OccupySF.net
The 14th Amendment states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Call your Congressperson and your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121
California Governor Gavin Newsom. Photo Credit: Chris Allen, VOICE
Note from the author: It is totally fine if you aren’t up for today’s 10 minute Activist Action! If you read this article and share it anywhere, especially if you share it with your local Indivisble chapter or directly with anyone who may be interested, that is incredibly helpful! Asking your County Democrat Chapter or any other group to endorse the legislation and share it with their members also has a powerful force multiplication impact.
California’s new felony is the latest state election protection law, not the first. The model bill for the other 49 states is at the bottom of this article.
On July 4, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California will introduce legislation making it a felony to seize ballots before they are counted and certified by state or county officials. The announcement responds to documented events. The FBI seized ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco took more than 650,000 ballots from his own county’s elections office before the California Supreme Court paused his investigation.
California already has a first version of this law in effect. Senate Bill 73, signed in May, makes it a felony to remove ballots from the custody of a county registrar, prohibits law enforcement, including federal officials, from accessing voting machines or voter rolls without a court order, and allows the attorney general or secretary of state to stop law enforcement deployments at voting locations. The legislature attached an urgency clause, so the law took effect immediately, six days before the June 2 primary. The new proposal extends felony coverage across the entire period between voting and certification.
California did not invent election protection law. Taking, destroying, or tampering with ballots was already a crime under state election codes across the country, and since 2020, 22 states have passed laws protecting election officials and workers from threats, harassment, and doxxing, many with bipartisan votes. What California added is narrow and new: a felony written in response to an actual seizure of ballots by a law enforcement agency, an event the president of the California Voter Foundation said had not previously happened anywhere in the country. The model bill below treats the California law as what it is, one piece of a larger act that assembles the protections states have been passing one at a time.
Your state can do even more to protect its elections, because ballot seizure is one method among several. Newsom’s own speech described the Department of Justice’s repeated attempts to obtain private voter data, the National Guard deployment in Los Angeles, and the intimidation of poll workers by federal agents. The model bill at the bottom of this article names seven offenses: seizure of ballots, unauthorized access to voting systems and nonpublic voter data, intimidation of election officials and workers, interference with the canvass or certification, refusal by an official to perform a required certification duty, destruction of election records, and coordinated armed deployments at election facilities.
Here is what makes this bill different, in plain English.
It is rapid. Most criminal prosecution happens after the fact: the crime is completed, the investigation takes months, and the charges arrive long after the election they failed to protect. This bill is written to operate while the crime is happening. An attempt carries the same felony penalty as the completed act, so a police officer can arrest on probable cause while the interference is in progress. State and local police are required to protect election workers, facilities, and materials the moment an election official requests it. And a court must hear an emergency injunction request within 24 hours of filing, with no bond required.
It takes the money. A court can restrain assets connected to the offense before trial so they cannot be moved or hidden, and on conviction the state takes the funds and property that financed the operation, along with its proceeds. The offenses also become racketeering predicates, which lets prosecutors treat an organized, funded interference operation as exactly that, with the forfeiture and civil damages that racketeering law provides.
It goes up the chain of command. The person who ordered the seizure, the person who organized it, and the person who financed it commit the same felony as the person who carried it out, whether or not they were present and whether or not the plan succeeded. Following orders is not a defense. Section 10 of the bill states it the way Newsom said it: “It does not matter who gave the order.”
It survives a presidential pardon. The pardon power covers offenses against the United States only. Every offense in this act is a state offense. A conviction stands no matter who ordered the act and no matter what protection was promised afterward.
And it already contains the answer to the Supremacy Clause. In plain English: the Supremacy Clause is the part of the Constitution that makes valid federal law override state law when the two conflict. Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials have claimed it gives federal agents absolute immunity from state prosecution, and a reader who sends this bill to an office may receive that claim in response. The claim overstates the law. Under the test courts have applied since 1890, a federal officer is protected from state prosecution only when federal law actually authorized the act and the officer reasonably believed the act was necessary and proper to federal duties; federal officials have never held blanket immunity.
Sections 10 and 11 of the bill are drafted to that exact test. Section 11 states that the act criminalizes nothing a valid federal statute or federal court order affirmatively authorizes, so the bill cannot conflict with federal law, and no current federal statute authorizes taking ballots, voter data, or voting equipment from state custody before certification. A federal officer charged under this act therefore has to show a court an authorization that does not exist. If the officer moves the case to federal court, the state still prosecutes it there, and a conviction is still a state conviction. And sheriffs, contractors, party staff, planners, and financiers hold no federal office, so they have no Supremacy Clause claim at all.
One timing fact needs acknowledging. California’s legislature remains in session through August, and many state legislatures have already completed their 2026 regular sessions. Adjournment leaves several actions available. A governor cannot create a felony by executive order, because only a legislature can define a crime, but governors in all 50 states have the authority to call a special session and place this bill on its agenda. A governor can also direct state police to enforce the ballot theft and tampering statutes the state already has, request a formal attorney general opinion confirming those statutes apply to anyone who takes ballots without a court order, and, where a genuine threat exists, use emergency powers, since in many states violating a governor’s emergency order is itself a criminal offense. The email below covers both situations.
Here is the request. We are asking Existentialist Republic readers and activists to help send this bill to all 50 governors, and to send it to your own state legislators. Legislators respond to what other states have already enacted, and the record here is real: the election codes states already enforce, the worker protection laws 22 states have passed since 2020, and now California’s ballot seizure felony.
We need 10 subscribers per article to keep this machine producing the activism that puts democracy on the offensive. Don’t let this be the reason you skip a meal or miss rent but if you can subscribe then you’re essentially gifting the publication to millions of readers. Check out the bottom of this article to see the free ER library of activism books, booklets, and legislation.
Find your governor’s contact page. Search your governor’s name plus the word contact, or use the directory at nga.org/governors.
Find your state legislators at openstates.org/find_your_legislator. Enter your address and the tool lists each legislator who represents you. The number varies by state, from one in Nebraska to three or more in states with multi-member districts. Send the message to each of them.
Send each office the message below, adjusted to fit you. If you are able, copy the full model bill from the bottom of this article and paste it below your signature, in the body of the email, not as an attachment. This is easiest from a computer browser, because the bill is long. Pasting matters: many offices do not click links in email from senders they do not know, spam filters divert messages that contain links, and attachments from unknown senders often go unopened. Pasted text arrives readable with nothing to click and nothing to open. If you are on your phone and pasting the full bill is not practical, send the short message with the link anyway. A short message that gets sent accomplishes more than a complete one that does not.
Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026 in Portland, Maine.
(Photo by Laura Brett/Getty Images)
The campaign, said one organizer, “was never really about one candidate. It was about what Mainers ultimately wanted and deserved: a Senate seat that answers to them.”
As calls mounted on Monday evening for US Senate candidate Graham Platner to drop out of the race in Maine following sexual assault allegations, progressive organizers emphasized that primary voters in the state have made clear their demand for a candidate who prioritizes the needs of working people.
Should Platner be replaced as the Democratic nominee, said the political action organization Our Revolution, the new candidate must be one “who has actually lived the fight Graham Platner ran on: a record with working people, with unions, against corporate money.”
“To the Democratic establishment: This is not your opening,” said Joseph Geevarghese, the group’s executive director. “Mainers did not vote by an overwhelming margin against Janet Mills and the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee]’s handpicked pick just to be handed another status-quo candidate anyway. They deserve what they voted for… The movement will settle for nothing less, because that is what Mainers deserve.”
Platner has not said whether he will end his campaign, during which he has traveled across the state and energized voters from across the political spectrum with his working-class-focused platform—one that calls for Medicare for All, a billionaire’s minimum tax, a stop to “billionaires buying elections” through a repeal of Citizens United, and an end to US military aid for Israel.
In a video he posted on social media Monday in response to the allegations, which came from a woman he dated from 2019-21, he denied that he had committed sexual assault but said he was “mindful of the political reality” and that his campaign is “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward” in order to defeat five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins. The Maine Senate race is crucial as Democrats aim to win back control of the US Senate.
An aide for Platner told The New York Times Monday evening that if he were to step aside, “it would only be with a guarantee of being replaced by a candidate who he believes is true to the values and vision and policy agenda of the campaign that Maine voted for.”
Platner won the Democratic primary in June by nearly 53 points. His opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, was on the ballot despite having suspended her campaign in April, citing a lack of funds. Ahead of the primary, Platner had faced other controversies, including one regarding comments he made on Reddit several years ago; a skull-and-crossbones tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol—a connection he said he was not aware of; and allegations of physical aggression from a GOP-affiliated ex-girlfriend.
Geevarghese said Monday that “everyone deserves a fair and open process, and Graham Platner is entitled to due process like anyone else. But the allegations against him are credible, and at this point they are too serious to treat as a distraction from the campaign or the issues. Sexual violence is a red line. We are withdrawing our endorsement and calling on him to withdraw from this race.”
He emphasized that the campaign “engaged thousands of working people in Maine around a simple idea: that Maine’s Senate seat should belong to its people, not corporate money.”
“That was never really about one candidate,” Geevarghese said. “It was about what Mainers ultimately wanted and deserved: a Senate seat that answers to them.”
The sentiment was echoed by the Maine Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which had not previously endorsed Platner.
“The power of the Platner campaign was undeniable, but that power does not come from a candidate; it comes from tens of thousands of Mainers who were inspired by his campaign’s platform and urgency,” said Maine DSA. “Over the last year, everyday people who had long ago written off electoral politics have shown up and worked to build power on a scale Maine has never seen before.”
“Maine Democratic Party leadership has a choice: Nominate an establishment candidate who offers excuses, not answers, and ultimately loses to Susan Collins; or offer a candidate who harnesses the still-growing momentum, follows the platform that is so energizing to voters in Maine and across the country, and takes our state back for the many, not the money,” said the group.
The state’s Democratic candidate for governor, former state legislator Hannah Pingree, also said that Platner had “tapped into something real—voters hungry for change showed up with real passion and energy.”
“That energy doesn’t have to go away,” said Pingree. “It needs a new candidate to carry it forward.”
Under state law, Platner could be replaced on the ballot if he withdraws by July 13. The state Democratic Party would have until July 27 to name a replacement.
According to the Times, party officials in the state “have discussed possible plans to replace Mr. Platner on the ballot, with options including a pop-up convention on the weekend of July 25 to choose a nominee, or holding a statewide caucus to effectively redo the party’s primary election.”
They have reportedly “ruled out having the state party’s committee, which includes about 100 members, choose the nominee.”
Potential replacements who have been named include former Democratic gubernatorial candidates such as Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former state Senate President Troy Jackson, who campaigned with Platner and was also endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) when he ran for governor.
Jackson told Bangor Daily News reporter Benjamin Kail late Monday that potentially having to replace Platner on the ballot was “something I never considered, but if Graham’s stepping away, I am very, very interested and think I’m the best person to replace him.”
He said he “received dozens of calls and messages of support” after the news broke Monday.
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Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, in Santa Rosa, Calif., on May 27, 2026. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
On a hot Wednesday afternoon in the Palestinian village of Zanuta, California Rep. Ro Khanna walked through the ruins of a Palestinian school demolished by Israeli settlers several years earlier.
While standing amid the rubble, one of Khanna’s staffers spotted an Israeli settler wearing a large smile on his face with an assault rifle draped around his shoulder, peering at the group through a broken window.
Khanna and his small delegation of his staffer Cameron Kasky, their driver, and a security guard hurried back into their van, Khanna and Kasky, a Parkland school shooting survivor and former congressional candidate, said in interviews with The Intercept.
Settlers had parked their car directly in front of them, blocking their exit along a narrow dirt road that juts from Highway 60 with rocky slopes and dry grass on both sides.
Over the next 75 to 90 minutes, Israeli settlers, who carried what appeared to be M4 assault rifles, intimidated and harassed Khanna and his group, who felt their fear rising from inside the van. The settlers proceeded to menace the Americans: They prevented the group from leaving the village, brandished their rifles, laughed and yelled taunts at the group, kicked the van’s tires, and wiped down the windows with their hands to gawk inside, recording the group and snapping photos. Khanna and Kasky said their security aide identified the men as members of the Hilltop Youth, an extremist settler group with a history of violent raids, which prompted more concern among the delegation.
A video provided by Cameron Kasky appears to show members of the Israeli military talking with the settlers who had blocked the road to stop Khanna’s delegation from leaving.
“It’s the most powerless I have felt,” Khanna told The Intercept. “They paraded around the van, laughing, smiling, brandishing the M4s. I have not been treated that way in any other country I’ve traveled to, including China. In any place that I have traveled, it’s the most arrogant and humiliating treatment of American citizens I have endured — I was quite shocked.”
“It’s the most powerless I have felt.”
Two white pickup trucks later pulled up and out stepped more armed settlers, according to video and footage reviewed by The Intercept. Later, another vehicle arrived carrying a group of four men and women dressed in green military uniforms, which their security aide identified as Israeli military, Khanna and Kasky recalled. Rather than attempting to resolve the situation, the soldiers joined the group, laughing and talking with the settlers, and at one point, smoking cigarettes together, they said.
Even after the security aide identified the group as an American delegation with a member of Congress, the settlers and soldiers did not budge. “The security person said this is the most concerned he’s ever been, and he’s done tours for decades,” Khanna recalled.
In this image provided by Kasky, the Khanna staffer who was part of the delegation, show a person they said was among the armed settlers who detained them on the road. Photo: Courtesy of Cameron Kasky
In response to a request for comment by The Intercept, the Israeli military acknowledged that “a report was received regarding Israeli civilians who were unlawfully blocking the vehicles of foreign nationals and members of the media.” The statement directly contradicted Khanna’s and Kasky’s account, with the military claiming soldiers had helped clear the group of settlers.
“Upon receiving the report, IDF troops were dispatched to the scene, quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians, and reopened the blocked road. The IDF soldiers operating in the area did not take part in blocking the road,” the military said, adding, “The identity of the armed individual is currently under review.”
“I’m a Jewish school shooting survivor, and I’m sitting here looking at Jewish kids who have the eyes of a school shooter.”
Kasky, who joined Khanna’s office in January following his own visit to the West Bank and has been working with Khanna on his Israel and Palestine policy, said he was afraid the incident would turn more violent, recalling accounts of settler attacks.
“I was sitting there like, ‘Are the Hilltop Youth about to blow a bunch of holes in our vehicle?’” Kasky remembered saying to himself. “I’m a Jewish school shooting survivor, and I’m sitting here looking at Jewish kids who have the eyes of a school shooter. So it was a very surreal experience for me.”
This photo provided by Kasky appears to show the settlers interacting with a member of the Israeli military. Khanna and Kasky said when they military arrived, they did not help clear their path, instead laughing, talking, and smoking with the settlers. Photo: Courtesy of Cameron Kasky
Harassment of foreign delegations in the West Bank is more rare. In September 2023, European Union diplomats reported harassment by Israeli settlers during a visit. In May 2025, Israeli soldiers fired warning shots toward a delegation of diplomats visiting Jenin, which included officials from the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Ireland. The last reported instance of harassment toward an American delegation was in 2015, when settlers hurled rocks at diplomats investigating reports of settler attacks in the area.
Members of Congress have visited the West Bank in the past, but Khanna’s run-in with settlers is the first known instance of direct harassment by Israeli settlers toward a sitting U.S. lawmaker.
“Imagine what life is like for ordinary Palestinians who do not have a national platform.”
During the incident, Khanna said he phoned an official in the U.S. Embassy, which urged the group not to escalate the situation. After more than an hour, the group of settlers and soldiers suddenly drove off. Shortly after, Israeli police arrived and instructed the group not to return under threat of arrest.
“I thought to myself, if they can do this to an American member of Congress and to American citizens, imagine what life is like for ordinary Palestinians who do not have a national platform, who can’t just pick up the phone and call the American embassy,” Khanna said.
The recent trip wasn’t Khanna’s first visit to the West Bank. In 2022, Khanna joined a delegation of lawmakers, led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and visited with leaders in Israel and Palestinian leaders in Ramallah. Khanna’s remarks praising Israel’s tech industry drew criticism from pro-Palestine advocates, who at the time accused the lawmaker of using the visit as a “photo op” to “whitewash Israeli apartheid.”
Khanna had long branded himself as an anti-war figure. In 2004, he ran an unsuccessful bid for Congress centered around his opposition to the Iraq War. And after being elected to Congress in 2016, Khanna would help spearhead an effort to halt U.S. military support to Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen’s civil war.
Israel, however, remained a blindspot. But since the October 7 Hamas attacks and the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Khanna has evolved from a pro-Israel Democrat who regularly voted to send military aid to Israel into one of its staunchest opponents, especially as he gears up for a potential 2028 presidential run.
Khanna is a co-sponsor to the Block the Bombs bill and in April said he opposes the transfer of all U.S. arms — both offensive and so-called defensive weapons — to Israel. Last month, he attempted to strike a portion of the National Defense Authorization Act that seeks to codify Israel’s joint development of weapons with the U.S. and said he would also urge senators to oppose the pro-Israel proposal. Khanna is also a co-sponsor on the West Bank Violence Prevention Act, which seeks to codify sanctions on Israeli settlers, and in January, introduced a resolution opposing the expansion of settlements. In his war powers resolution against the Iran war, he said in June 2025, “U.S. involvement in Israel’s war with Iran is a red line.”
After the run-in with Israeli settlers, the congressman put a finer point on the need to stop arming Israel.
“We’re supplying them the M4s that they’re using to detain American citizens,” he said. “We’re supplying them the weapons that they’re using to kill Palestinian Americans. We’re supplying them the weapons that they’re using to commit terror on the Palestinian population in the West Bank. It is simply inhumane, and the United States needs to not just sanction these extremist settlers — we need to demand that the IDF start to demolish the outposts in the West Bank.”
“We’re supplying them the weapons that they’re using to kill Palestinian Americans.”
Khanna said he still differentiates between settler outposts and larger, long-standing Israeli settlement communities that function as suburban neighborhoods. While he believes outposts should be dismantled, he said the larger settlements should be subject to a land swap with Palestinians as part of a broader political deal to grant Palestinians sovereignty. Yet he still opposed the expansion of the larger settlements and said U.S. funds should not be used to construct such developments.
As Congress took its summer recess, Khanna took the three-day visit to the West Bank this week at Kasky’s urging. The American journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who extensively covers the West Bank and facilitated Kasky’s previous visit, had invited Khanna to visit and connected the group with local Palestinian residents, businesses, activists, and leaders.
When Khanna and Kasky landed in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Kasky said Israeli airport security took him to a back office where officers questioned him for 40 minutes while showing him a printed screenshot of his Twitter profile where he had previously written in his bio “Stop funding genocide” and a separate printout of a tweet by a pro-Israel user who had spotted Kasky at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport in December 2025. The officials continued to hold Kasky despite Khanna identifying him as a part of his office.
After his release, Kasky said he received notification that the Israeli government had revoked his travel visa.
“I’m probably never going to get into the country again,” he said.
During the wide-ranging trip, the delegation spoke with Palestinian shopkeepers in Hebron, who reported harassment from neighboring Israelis who from the upper floors hurled rotten vegetables and acid, and urinated on their stores below. Mayors of Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, and Beit Jala told Khanna of water shortages and the Israeli military-imposed restrictions on Palestinians from drilling new wells, while Israeli settlers enjoy unfettered access to water. Khanna met with the relatives of Amer Mohammad Saada Rabee, the 14-year-old Palestinian American from New Jersey who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in April. Other Palestinian residents, including American citizens, spoke of settlers destroying their cars and raiding their homes. The brother of Awdah Hathaleen, who was shot dead by the Israeli settler Yinon Levi in July 2025, told Khanna how he still sees Levi roam free as Israeli prosecutors mull whether to charge him.
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On Wednesday, the same day of the incident with Israeli settlers, Khanna’s group had been held up for more than an hour by Israeli officials in Masafer Yatta, where the Israeli government constructed a large metal gate on the only road in and out of the area. Khanna, who is Hindu and of Indian descent, said he has never been more acutely aware of his identity as when he was in Palestine, with Israeli guards constantly asking about his race and religion.
Khanna — who is a ranking member of the House Armed Services subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Innovation Technology, and Information Systems — urged other members of Congress, especially other ranking members in foreign policy committees, to also visit the West Bank in Palestinian-led visits.
He said he would raise the issue of the settler incident with the State Department and his colleagues in Congress.
“I am convinced that the most pro-Israel candidate — who may dispute my characterization of genocide by legal means, who may disagree with me in my belief of a Palestinian state, who may argue with me about Israel taking preventive measures, in their view, to minimize civilian casualties — even such a person, if they spent one day in the West Bank,” Khanna said, “if they visited the Palestinians side of Hebron, if they visited Um al-Khair, if they visited Palestinian towns and villages in Areas A and B, if they saw the settler’s outpost, they would conclude that it is apartheid, that it is unjust, that it is a perversion of Judaism in any form of civilized human existence.”
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Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, arrives at a news conference on April 28, 2020, in Augusta, Maine. Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP
Candidates entering the Maine Senate race after Graham Platner suspended his campaign following a rape allegation are walking a fine line between distancing themselves from the disgraced candidate and embracing his base, which they’ll need to beat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in November.
As of Friday, at least six candidates have officially declared that they will enter the race, with others still considering their options. All of them have been wary of aligning themselves too closely with Platner, who had already been plagued by scandal before being accused of rape by an ex-girlfriend. But they run the risk of alienating Platner’s energized base if they distance themselves too much from his policy commitments such as fighting military spending, ending the genocide in Gaza, advocating for Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and strengthening protections for unions.
In the running are at least six candidates, three of whom who lost in Maine’s Democratic gubernatorial primary in June. Former state Sen. Troy Jackson, whose gubernatorial campaign was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was the first to enter the race. Next came Dr. Nirav Shah, who previously directed the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
Brewery co-founder Dan Kleban, who dropped out of the Maine Democratic Senate primary and endorsed Gov. Janet Mills in October, also entered the race this week, as did social worker Paige Loud and former Capital Hill staffer Jordan Wood, both of whom lost the primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
Of the first three candidates, Shah has faced the most skepticism of his progressive bona fides, despite what he says is his long-standing support for universal healthcare, dating back to his time as a public health official and his career as a doctor, and his stance against the genocide in Gaza, expressed during the gubernatorial campaign. His critics have painted his declarations of support for Medicare for All and focus on criticism of Israel amid his Senate launch as an effort to pivot to the left after taking a more measured approach as a candidate in the gubernatorial primary.
He told The Intercept that those criticisms are a mischaracterization of his record.
“Critics who are suggesting that this is a newfound policy position, they are putting politics over the facts,” Shah said.
Asked if he would echo Platner’s call to abolish ICE outright, Shah said the agency is “out of control” and “cannot continue to exist” in its current form. “Whether we reform ICE, whether we disband it and start from scratch, or whether we transfer their duties to CBP, ICE, as it currently is constituted, cannot continue to exist,” he said.
Like Shah, Jackson and Bellows are now doing their best to prove to Platner’s base that they will carry out his policy vision.
While Platner was a vocal critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jackson faced criticism for not mentioning Israel or Gaza in his Senate launch on Wednesday. But a day later, he issued a statement denouncing the genocide in Gaza as “unconscionable” and saying he would “never vote in favor of US taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel.”
Bellows, who differentiated herself from her Shah on issues from labor to renter protections during the gubernatorial primary, has said she’s running on Medicare for All, workers’ rights, and to “protect our neighbors.” She and Jackson both criticized Shah’s gubernatorial campaign for ads backing his campaign run by a group pushing school voucher programs. Maine Education Association, a union of educators, endorsed all three candidates for governor but ranked Shah third.
After challenging Sen. Susan Collins in 2014 and losing by more than 35 percentage points, Bellows was elected to the state Senate in 2016. Bellows has previously led the ACLU of Maine as well as the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine. She has not made many public comments on Israel, but signed a proclamation from Mills recognizing Israel’s 75th anniversary and its “friendship and cooperation” with the U.S. in April 2023.
Shah has also faced claims that he’s taken money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, though the group does not spend in state-level races. He is endorsed by 314 Action, a group that backs candidates with a background in science, which took $1 million from the super PAC for AIPAC in 2024. On Friday, in response to claims that Shah had taken AIPAC money, 314 Action’s executive director said it hadn’t taken money from AIPAC this cycle and would not. He characterized the criticism as “worse than the MAGA scare tactics.”
Shah told The Intercept he has never taken AIPAC money and would not accept it if offered. He also said that he would not support any form of military aid — offensive or defensive — to Israel. He also pointed to a digital ad his campaign ran toward the end of his gubernatorial primary that highlighted “standing against the genocide in Gaza.”
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In a campaign kickoff on Thursday, Shah opened the event with remarks from two former Platner volunteers before highlighting what he said was “little daylight” between their platforms. He ended the event by telling a reporter he would not seek Platner’s endorsement.
“I spent most of my life watching decisions get made by people who will never have to live with the consequences of them, and my generation is expected to just accept that,” said 18-year-old Liv Drewniak, co-founder of the group Midcoast Youth Activists and a former youth organizer and volunteer for Platner’s campaign.
“It was never about one person. It was about a movement.”
“I thought that my time of feeling powerless had come to an end when I started working with the Platner campaign, but the last few days of news have been heartbreaking, and I saw all the hard-fought and harder-won progress that I was so invested in crumble before me,” Drewniak said.
“But then I remembered why I was so excited for that change in the first place. It was never about one person. It was about a movement, a movement hand-built by the people of Maine. And that momentum has not stalled, and that energy will never fail. It will now have a new leader.”
A senator from a different state weighed in on the new crop of candidates on Friday. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said Shah should not be the nominee due to his handling of veterans’ health issues in her home state. Duckworth and her Senate colleague Dick Durbin called on Shah to resign in 2018 over his handling of a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak at a veterans’ facility.
Shah said the attack was “recycled” after his critics raised it during his gubernatorial primary campaign. He said he had addressed voters’ questions about the outbreak, and his campaign noted that Collins had complimented his response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Maine.
“I have deep respect for Senator Duckworth and the sacrifices she has made for our country. I’m the outsider in this race, and outsiders get attacked, so I want to speak directly to the people of Maine, because they’ve seen this playbook before,” Shah said in a statement to The Intercept.
“Voters can judge my record by this: a Democratic Presidential administration reviewed my record and then hired me to help lead the U.S. CDC. … Mainers made up their own minds and that’s why they gave me more first-choice votes than any other candidate in the gubernatorial primary.”
“The people of Maine saw with their own eyes who I am during the pandemic, when I stood at that podium every day and told them the truth, even when it was hard,” he said. “I’d invite people to ask when Susan Collins last did the same. Every day Democrats spend attacking Democrats is another day Collins doesn’t have to answer for her record. I won’t take that bait, and I don’t believe Mainers will either.”
The Maine Democratic Party will hold a nominating convention to choose one candidate; it must submit its pick by July 27.
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The New York Times logo is seen on the building’s facade in New York City on January 22, 2026.
(Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
“This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
The Trump administration on Friday escalated its war with the press by subpoenaing several reporters at The New York Times days after the paper published a story on Wednesday that detailed security concerns about the luxury jet the Qatari government gave to President Donald Trump.
According to the Times, the subpoenas are attempting to force reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday next week, a move that the paper describes as an “extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.”
The issued subpoenas do not specifically name the Times’ reporting on the Qatari jet as the reason for the grand jury probe, although they were given to all four journalists—Tyler Pager, Julian Barnes, Eric Schmitt, and Eric Lipton—who reported the story.
Additionally, the Times noted, a senior official at the FBI had asked the paper to hold off publishing its story on the jet before it came out on Wednesday, citing unspecified national security concerns about its content.
David McCraw, the top attorney representing the Times’ newsroom, denounced the subpoenas as an attack on the freedom of the press.
“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” said McGraw. “This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
It is highly uncommon for government investigators to subpoena journalists when they are probing national security leaks, as such actions are generally seen as having a chilling effect on reporters’ ability to gather information.
Rick Stengel, former under secretary of state for President Barack Obama, said that the Times’ reporting on the Qatari jet, whose security upgrades are being financed with US tax dollars, is completely within the scope of constitutional protections for press freedom.
“The reporting that the Times journalists have been subpoenaed for is exactly the kind of journalism the First Amendment is designed to protect: matters involving national security and taxpayer dollars,” wrote Stengel in a Saturday social media post. “Reporting that embarrasses a president is protected speech.”
Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin also denounced the Trump administration for trying to drag reporters into a grand jury investigation.
“This action by the US government to subpoena reporters for reporting legitimate news on security concerns about Air Force One should alarm every American,” Griffin wrote.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, accused the Trump administration of abusing government power not to defend national security, but to protect the president from personal humiliation.
“We’ve long said that when the government claims it needs to investigate journalists to protect national security, it really means its own reputational security,” said Stern. “This is as clear an example as you can get. The administration’s embarrassment that it reportedly charged taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit a flying bribe that still isn’t secure enough for hostile times does not supersede the need for a free and independent press.”
This is the second time in recent weeks that the Trump administration has tried to subpoena reporters to compel their testimony in grand jury investigations.
Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from northern Maine who previously served as the state’s Senate president, is making the case that he has the best shot at unseating Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November following Graham Platner’s exit from the race on Wednesday.
“There is a powerful movement of working class people in the state of Maine, and millions more across America who are ready to send a progressive fighter to the Senate,” Jackson wrote in a social media post on Wednesday, formally announcing his Senate run. “I’ve been fighting for that movement my whole life—and I’m sure as hell not backing down now, when this fight is needed most.”
“I’m in,” he added. “And we’re going to defeat Susan Collins. Maine deserves a senator that will fight for working families.”
Jackson, who filed federal paperwork earlier this week to explore a US Senate bid as the Maine Democratic Party scrambled to construct a process to choose Platner’s replacement ahead of the July 27 deadline, recently fell short in a highly competitive race for the Maine Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nomination.
But those who are rallying behind Jackson argue his economic populist messaging, union backing, support for Medicare for All, and appeal across broad swaths of Maine—including rural counties—make him the most sensible choice to take on Collins, who is running for a sixth term in the US Senate.
“Troy has spent his life fighting for working people,” said the national progressive advocacy group Our Revolution, which rescinded its endorsement of Platner following the sexual assault allegation against him, which he denied.
Our Revolution noted that Jackson led Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential campaigns in Maine in both 2016 and 2020. Jackson also appeared alongside Sanders and Platner at “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies during his gubernatorial bid.
“Long before this Senate seat became available, Troy had built a record of standing with workers, unions, and rural communities across Maine,” said Our Revolution, which announced Wednesday that it is mobilizing volunteers across Maine to “ensure voters are represented by a candidate who reflects the agenda they overwhelmingly supported” during the Democratic primary process—a contest that Platner won handily.
Jackson is one of several Democrats jumping at the opportunity to challenge Collins, who has enabled President Donald Trump’s destructive legislative agenda and helped pave the way for the gutting of reproductive rights nationwide.
Nirav Shah, former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, formally announced on Thursday that he is launching a bid to replace Platner. Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, said Tuesday that she is “seriously considering” entering the Senate race. (Like Jackson, both Shah and Bellows unsuccessfully ran for Maine’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination.)
A flash poll commissioned by the Platner campaign earlier this week found that Jackson performed better than Shah and Bellows in hypothetical match-ups against Collins.
Christine Kirby, a spokeswoman for Jackson, told Drop Site on Tuesday that since the sexual assault allegation against Platner was made public, Jackson’s team has received a torrent of calls and messages urging him to run for the Senate nomination.
“He is clearly the strongest option to replace Graham Platner and take on Susan Collins in the general election,” said Kirby. “This movement is greater than any one person, it’s about a coalition of Maine people fighting for a future that doesn’t have to belong only to the wealthy and powerful. And Troy is up for the fight.”
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Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who represents Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Santa Clara, Milpitas, and part of San Jose, was on a three-day tour of the West Bank when he said he was detained Saturday by Israeli settlers and military personnel.
As the Associated Press reports, a representative of Congressman Ro Khanna confirmed that he had been detained following a confronation in the Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta, which had been abandoned after attacks by Israeli settlers. Khanna’s group was reportedly first confronted by a group of armed men who allegedly taunted and yelled at them in Hebrew and Arabic.
The New York Times confirmed that one of its photographers witnessed the confrontation from another vehicle, and that members of the Israeli military then arrived in two vehicles.
Khanna told the AP that he was “dispirited” to see the Israeli soldiers interact in a friendly manner with the armed settlers, smoking cigarettes with them, and then proceeding to block them from leaving the area. He was reportedly detained and kept from leaving for 90 minutes.
“If this can happen to an American member of Congress, imagine what life is like for Palestinians who have no smartphones, no security, and no national platform,” Khanna said to the AP.
He added, to the Times, “I felt powerless in that situation, which is not an easy thing, as I have a lot of privilege in life.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli military confirmed that they had dispatched soldiers to reopen the road and stop Israeli citizens from unlawfully blockading it, but they denied that the soldiers played in role in detaining anyone.
As the Times notes, Khanna appears to be following in the footsteps of many presidential hopefuls of the recent past, who typically travel to Israel to burnish “their foreign policy credentials,” and usually have friendly meetings with Israeli leaders. But Khanna, an outspoken progressive, clearly seems to have take the trip for a purpose antagonistic to Israel, to be able to appeal to progressive voters in the US who believe Israel has conducted an ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people — and his visit to this particular abandoned village site was part and parcel of that.
Khanna is likely planning to announce a run for the presidency in 2028.
Top image: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) questions U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as he testifies before the House Armed Services Committee April 29, 2026 in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC. Hegseth testified on the Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
ICE Agents and protesters face off during a costume party protest at the ICE facility in Broadview, IL, November 1, 2025. Photo credit: Paul Goyette / Flickr (CC BY 4.0)
Government agents gunned down yet another person on the streets of an American city. If Republicans had shown any interest in holding ICE to account, or at least to higher law enforcement standards, he might still be alive.
The killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston at the hands of ICE agents is a lot of things: a tragedy, an outrage, and unnecessary. However, there is one thing it is not: a surprise.
That’s because the immigrant from Mexico, who came to the US as a teenager, built a business there, paid taxes, and raised a family, got the treatment that Republicans believe someone like him deserves.
We know this because earlier this year, after masked government agents had gunned down and killed two American citizens in broad daylight before the administration falsely labeled them as “domestic terrorists,” GOP lawmakers had an opportunity to make sure that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen anymore.
Or, if it did, that there would be a measure of accountability.
They could have put a stop to poorly trained and heavily armed goons roaming American cities and looking to randomly grab brown people off the streets. They could have forced them to take off those masks and turn on their body cameras.
But they chose not to.
Instead of negotiating with congressional Democrats, who wanted to impose reasonable restrictions on those agents, such as making sure they wouldn’t detain US citizens, requiring judicial warrants before they entered private properties, and allowing state and local governments to investigate and prosecute crimes they commit, the GOP kept all of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shut down for weeks.
They then passed a partisan reconciliation bill that, instead of including any of those reforms and mandates, gave ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tens of billions more dollars that came on top of an even larger amount that those two agencies had already received in the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in 2025.
The death of Araujo is the logical conclusion of those actions.
It only happened because ICE agents, who were not wearing body cameras, could be reasonably sure that they would not face consequences for shooting him as long as they concocted a reasonable story, i.e., that Araujo was trying to ram them.
This, by the way, is the same tall tale their colleagues have tried to tell in other cases before the lie fell apart.
Here, ICE claimed that Araujo rammed one of its vehicles, did not follow verbal commands, and then attempted to “weaponize” his van.
The other men in the vehicle disputed that account. In addition, new video evidence and an expert analysis cast doubt on the government’s version of events.
Congressional Democrats demanded that the killing must be investigated by authorities outside of the Trump administration.
“DHS and ICE do not get to investigate themselves behind closed doors and call it accountability,” said Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia (D-TX). “We are demanding the full truth, the full footage, and a real independent investigation. Lorenzo’s family deserves answers. Houston deserves answers. And we will not let DHS or ICE bury this, stall for time, or hide behind the same tired lies.”
This death, and many more that have happened on American streets and in ICE detention centers over the past 18 months, might have been avoided if those agents felt that their wrongdoing might be punished and if they knew that footage from their body cams would not allow them to get away with committing crimes.
However, Republicans made sure those things didn’t happen, which is why they bear at least some responsibility for this incident and many others across the nation.
Klaus MarreKlaus Marre, a former congressional reporter, is a senior editor for US politics at WhoWhatWhy. He writes regularly here, and you can also follow him on Bluesky and Substack.
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