The facts
The Trump administration is facing a lawsuit over its intention to deploy a significant number of election monitors to polling stations for the upcoming midterm elections. The NAACP filed the suit, asserting that the plan "stands to jeopardize" the elections and could "interfere with the right of voters to participate in the election free from intimidation." Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, had previously stated her hope to send 1,000 monitors to midterm polling sites. Kristen Clarke, the NAACP's general counsel, argued that no federal statute grants the Justice Department the right to send such monitors and accused the administration of intending to disrupt election processes. The NAACP's lawsuit aims to compel the release of records concerning the monitor deployment, which they requested under the Freedom of Information Act on September 1. A Justice Department spokesperson stated that election monitors comply with all legal and ethical requirements and that their work is consistent with longstanding department practices. However, concerns have been raised, including by Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, who criticized the behavior of two monitors during the state's primaries, describing their actions as "aggressive, unexpected, disruptive." The Justice Department disagreed with this characterization, stating the meeting with Governor Gordon was cordial.
Our take
Oh, for fuck's sake. The Trump Justice Department, a cesspool of authoritarian dick-swinging, is now so desperate to cling to power it's trying to rebrand voter intimidation as a fucking public service. The NAACP has sued these pricks, and it’s about goddamn time someone did. Their plan? To send a thousand federal 'monitors' to polling places. That’s not monitoring, that’s a standing army of bureaucratic bullies hoping their very presence makes people shit themselves and go home.
Let’s autopsy this bullshit. Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s civil rights division, wants to unleash this legion of hall monitors. Her division’s purpose is now perverted into a fantasy where her job is to loom over voters like a bad smell. What a pathetic fucking legacy. You protect civil rights by ensuring people can vote, not by deploying a goon squad that makes voting feel like a crime scene investigation.
The NAACP’s lawyer, Kristen Clarke, correctly points out there’s no law allowing this. It’s a pure power grab, a rectal extraction of authority they wish they had. So they’re using FOIA to try and see the paperwork for this voter-suppression safari. The DOJ’s defense is that this is 'longstanding practice.' Sure, and shitting your pants is a longstanding practice if you’re a cowardly infant, but we don’t call it tailoring.
The hilarious part - the specific, verified joke - is that even their own side thinks these monitors are cunts. Wyoming’s Republican governor, Mark Gordon, said two of them were 'aggressive, unexpected, disruptive' during his state’s primaries. The DOJ called the meeting 'cordial.' So their idea of a polite chat is apparently so aggressively disruptive it pisses off a GOP governor. These assholes are so bad at intimidation they can’t even intimidate correctly. They’re like bouncers who get thrown out of their own club for being too rowdy.
This whole scheme is a transparent, flaccid attempt to dress up fear in a cheap suit. It’s the electoral equivalent of a security guard following you around a store because of the color of your shirt. The lawsuit is the legal version of a boot to the nuts of this pathetic, anti-democratic pantomime. May it succeed so thoroughly that the only thing these monitors get to observe is the inside of a courtroom as a judge tells them to get their fucking hands out of our ballot boxes.
