Trump's $21 trillion fantasy, Ken Paxton's meltdown, and a Republican revolt

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We have just learned that ICE has obtained more than 50 million American voter records just weeks before the midterms. And what the government may be planning to do with that raises some really serious questions. Now, meanwhile, Donald Trump could be facing something even worse than impeachment if Republicans get crushed in November. He could lose his grip on the Republican Party entirely. We also have Ken Paxton in Texas somehow managing to accidentally pray for the end of capitalism. It's really weird. And Fox Business is promoting Trump's completely ridiculous claim that he brought in twenty one trillion dollars. Dr. Oz tried going to the supermarket again. It didn't go well. And a Republican voter called into C-Span and said his Republican Party deserves to lose every election. We have that and your emails, comments and questions and plenty more on today's show. Glad you're here.

We are now just days away, days away from the midterm elections, if you can believe it. And we have learned something extraordinary about what ICE is doing with American voter information, your voter information, my voter information. According to newly released documents from the government, ICE's Investigative Division has obtained more than 50 million voter records from the DOJ.

This is not about immigration enforcement. These are records being collected as part of an effort to investigate supposed voter fraud, which we are so sick of hearing of because it essentially doesn't exist at any statistically meaningful level. Now before anybody jumps to any conclusions, obtaining voter records isn't the same as changing someone's vote. We're not saying registrations have been deleted. We don't have the evidence right now that ballots have been interfered with. We don't have evidence that ICE has done this stuff. But why does ICE have these records? And what the records reveal already raises very serious questions about why an immigration enforcement agency is collecting this much information about elections and about voters and what are they going to do with it and what safeguards are there? Because ICE is not exactly an institution that we can have confidence in. The story comes from Common Dreams by Jake Johnson.

And it's based on documents that a FOIA request turned up, Freedom of Information Act, put forward by the legal advocacy organization Democracy Forward. And what the documents show is that HSI, which is the investigative arm of ICE, got about 50, 50 and a half million voter roll records from the Justice Department. And they also got about 26,000 records from US citizenship and information and immigration services. The states that they identified as priorities are Texas. Look, look at this list. Texas, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Ohio.

There is a lot of interest in that list because a lot of those states have really important elections coming up in just days.

Now, again, it is not inherently illegal for the government to investigate real voter fraud. That's fine. Noncitizens aren't allowed to vote in federal elections. If we have evidence that noncitizens voted in federal elections, that is a crime that should be investigated. I don't know of anyone who's saying don't investigate that. But the distinction that matters here is that the existence of 50 million voter records does not mean there are 50 million suspicious voters in the United States or anywhere close to that. It doesn't mean that there are 50 million noncitizens on the voter rolls. It doesn't mean there are 50 million fraudulent votes that have taken place. These are voter records being collected for investigation. And the question is whether the government has a legitimate evidence based reason to collect and analyze them on this scale. Now the voter records themselves are only the beginning of this story because the documents also reveal that ISIS thinking about sending undercover agents to investigate nonprofit organizations that help people register to vote. These are organizations whose job is to help eligible Americans, legal voters, participate in elections. And one particularly revealing detail is that ICE reviewed more than 40 nonprofits in New Jersey and found zero zero derogatory information. In other words, that review turned up no wrongdoing whatsoever. And yet they are continuing to push this forward. Now here's where the story starts to get even more concerning. If you're not worried already, the documents indicate that certain state voter records are being considered for entry into Palantir's elite system. That's all capital letters. Elite. It's an acronym. That is technology used by ICE to identify and locate people for immigration enforcement. So think about the implications of combining voter registration information with a system designed to locate people for deportation. Now here's an important update. Our friends over at Democracy Docket.