January 3, 2018

Trump Just Dissolved His Own Voter Fraud Commission

He blamed states that refused to hand over sensitive voter data for the decision.

Chris Kleponis/AP

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President Donald Trump dissolved his controversial “election integrity” commission to the cheers of voting rights advocates who saw the commission as a threat to ballot access. It was created after Trump tweeted, with no evidence, that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election. 

The White House released the following statement Wednesday evening:

“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry. Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.” 

The first action of the commission was to request reams of data on every registered voter from every state, including personal information such as party affiliation, address, criminal background, and partial social security numbers. The request alarmed both citizens and election officials, plunging the commission into controversy and inviting several lawsuits. Many secretaries of state of both parties refused to hand over the data. Trump attributed his decision to disband the commission to the ultimate lack of data.

Voting rights advocates and election experts celebrated the news, viewing the myriad lawsuits they had filed against the commission as a success in blocking its work. The commission’s vice chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, is well-known for pushing a legal agenda that would make it harder for people to register to vote and cast a ballot.

There are at least fifteen lawsuits filed against it, one of which was filed by a Democratic commissioner.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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