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A Bearded Pete Buttigieg Drops Into Iowa for a Pitch to Veterans

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A Bearded Pete Buttigieg Drops Into Iowa for a Pitch to Veterans

He has a new, carefully groomed beard. He bantered with bros for hours on an irreverent comedy podcast. And on Tuesday, he criticized the Trump administration through an appeal to patriotism in a state early on the presidential nominating calendar.

Pete Buttigieg is inching back into the Democrats’ spotlight this spring with a series of appearances that have prompted speculation about how one of the party’s most evidently ambitious politicians might spend the lead-up to 2028.

With Democrats still searching for a direction and a standard-bearer after November’s loss to President Trump, supporters of Mr. Buttigieg, a smooth-talking former mayor from Indiana who served as the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, hope he might take up that mantle.

Without ever uttering Mr. Trump’s name, Mr. Buttigieg, in front of a veteran-heavy crowd of more than 1,600 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, assailed the president’s efforts to cut the Department of Veterans Affairs and his broader handling of the country. He implored attendees to exert “peaceful but energetic” pressure on their representatives to block cuts to federal agencies and tax breaks for the wealthy. And he expressed optimism that people would resist Mr. Trump and restore faith in democracy.

“There is a parade of horribles emanating from this White House,” said Mr. Buttigieg, 43. But, he added, “the American people bow to no king.”

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Mr. Buttigieg’s town hall in Iowa, sponsored by VoteVets, a progressive veterans group, was his most notable involvement yet in the Democratic shadow primary race, with prominent governors and members of Congress competing for attention as they weigh 2028 presidential bids.

They have been busy: Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the party’s 2024 vice-presidential nominee, held a town hall in Iowa in March and plans to attend state party conventions this month in California and South Carolina, which is expected to host an early primary. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois ramped up 2028 speculation with a fiery speech last month in New Hampshire, another state traditionally at the front of the primary calendar. Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona held an event last week in Pennsylvania, a top battleground state.

And Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who has been less obvious about 2028 signaling but is seen as a possible contender, has been traveling the country alongside Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to rally supporters against the influence of big money in politics.

VoteVets is an ally of Mr. Buttigieg, a former Naval intelligence officer who deployed to Afghanistan, but the group is also close with other potential 2028 contenders with military experience, including Mr. Walz and Mr. Gallego.

Mr. Buttigieg, for his part, has shown particular interest in how Democrats can win back the overlapping mix of working-class voters, men and disenchanted Americans who gravitated to Mr. Trump’s vision of upending the establishment last November.

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At the town hall in Iowa, he offered no hints as to his ultimate political aspirations, though he did remind attendees of his past success in the Hawkeye State.

During one previous trip, “I was sort of winning the Iowa caucus,” he said casually, scratching his head as though reluctant to brag. “Run again!” someone yelled from the crowd. Mr. Buttigieg just chuckled.

Whether Mr. Buttigieg can successfully reach beyond the highly engaged voters who tune into MSNBC and read traditional news — the people who would attend a midweek political event in a non-election year — could determine whether he stands out in what is expected to be a crowded primary field.

Mr. Buttigieg has been explicit about his goal of reaching the apolitical voters who have said they feel the Democratic Party has become too focused on elites. Fielding questions from attendees on Tuesday about how the party could regain voters’ trust, he suggested it needed to have “some tough conversations.”

Democrats, Mr. Buttigieg said, must devise more proactive policy plans, rather than just defining themselves in opposition to Mr. Trump. And the party needed to “connect everything we believe, everything we say, everything we do, to everyday life,” he said.

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Mr. Buttigieg also acknowledged his party had done a poor job last year by insisting that the economy was doing well by traditional metrics even as voters were consistently expressing financial frustration, comparing it to minimizing the angst of an angry spouse. “How does that go over?” he asked.

Speaking with reporters after the event, Mr. Buttigieg was less definitive about whether Democrats had erred in supporting President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the re-election bid that he ultimately abandoned over concerns about his age.

Asked whether he had seen Mr. Biden experience cognitive decline last year — something Mr. Biden has pushed back against in recent interviews — Mr. Buttigieg did not answer directly. He did say that when he and Mr. Biden dealt with a bridge collapse in Baltimore last spring, “the same president that the world saw addressing that was the president that I was in the Oval with.”

Would the party have been better off if Mr. Biden had not run for re-election?

“Maybe,” Mr. Buttigieg allowed. “Right now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that’s the case.”

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Zach Wahls, a Democratic state senator in Iowa who is considering a run for U.S. Senate, said Mr. Buttigieg was “trying to meet voters where they are, and I think that is one of the most important things for the Democratic Party to do going forward.”

“His ability to communicate in an authentic, in-depth way is what really gets through to people who may not otherwise be superpolitical or who are frustrated with both parties,” Mr. Wahls added.

That was a sentiment echoed by attendees on Tuesday, who said they appreciated Mr. Buttigieg’s straightforward way of speaking.

“He doesn’t talk that political speech,” said Chris Bzdill, 55, of Cedar Rapids. “He understands that not everybody may agree with his view, but he’s going to give people an idea of where he stands. He’s not going to sit on the fence.”

The Iowa Republican Party had a different perspective on Mr. Buttigieg’s event. In a statement, it said Mr. Trump was improving access to health care for veterans while cutting wasteful spending at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and offered a contrasting take on Democrats from local veterans themselves.

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“Mayor Buttigieg and Democrats want to rewrite history, but veterans across Iowa know the truth: President Trump put them first,” Wayne Kreutner, an Air Force veteran in the Cedar Rapids area, said in the statement. “Joe Biden and the Democrats put politics first.”

Mr. Buttigieg first burst onto the national scene in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary as the little-known mayor of South Bend, Ind., population 100,000. He quickly gained acclaim for his sharp debate lines and cogent communication skills, but ultimately faded as Mr. Biden consolidated his support.

Lately, Mr. Buttigieg has been more visible, addressing college students at the University of California, Santa Barbara; getting laughs with Stephen Colbert on his late-night show; and appearing on the “Flagrant” comedy podcast, which bills itself as delivering “unruly hot takes” and opposing political correctness.

Mr. Buttigieg, who now lives in Michigan with his husband and two children, was considered a contender for the open Senate and governor races there, but he bowed out of both contests in March, fueling more speculation about a presidential run.

Mr. Wahls, a friend of Mr. Buttigieg’s who attended the town hall, said before the event that he was eager to see Mr. Buttigieg’s new beard in person. “Beard looks good!” he wrote in a text.

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But did he think it could be some sort of careful political calculation, planned to better appeal to the everyman voter? “I don’t know,” Mr. Wahls replied. “Every man’s relationship with his facial hair is a little different; I won’t speculate.”

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Where Trump Has Installed 2020 Election Deniers in Government

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Where Trump Has Installed 2020 Election Deniers in Government

When President Trump sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 election and remain in power, resistance from within his own government helped to stop him.

Top Justice Department officials rejected his specious claims that the vote had been marred by widespread fraud. Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security refused to go along with his outlandish efforts to seize voting machines. Cybersecurity experts praised the count as secure, and the intelligence community sidestepped his requests to declare that foreign nations had interfered in the results.

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But Mr. Trump’s second term looks very different. The president has filled his administration with people who are sympathetic to his baseless claims that the presidential race more than five years ago was stolen.

These officials have been put into positions across the federal government, at the White House and in agencies where they could play a role in undermining the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential cycle.

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At the same time, Mr. Trump has maintained allies in Congress and in state governments who could wield significant power over the process of counting votes and the seating of members of the House.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, sidestepped questions about Mr. Trump’s personnel decisions and instead asserted that he was “committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections.” She pointed to the president’s efforts to have Congress pass legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo identification to vote, prohibit mail-in ballots and bar the practice of ballot harvesting — having one person turn in mail ballots for several others.

“The vast majority of Americans support President Trump’s common-sense election integrity agenda,” Ms. Jackson said.

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Officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that the agencies were focused on keeping elections safe and secure, and were working to carry out the president’s policies on elections. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

With Mr. Trump consistently seeking to sow doubts about the integrity of elections, the number of election deniers he has installed across the administration means he would face fewer checks on any efforts to undermine an outcome he did not like, and could more easily amplify baseless claims of fraud.

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Here is a look at some of the key players.

The White House has no formal or legal role to play in administering elections, but Mr. Trump recently created a presidentially appointed position to oversee election integrity and security.

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That job has largely been involved in investigating the 2020 election.

What happened in 2020

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Mr. Trump has always been the government’s most avid promoter of false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him. And in 2020, he routinely used the force of the Oval Office — albeit unsuccessfully — to strong-arm state officials and federal appointees to act on his claims.

Kurt Olsen

Director of election security and integrity

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Mr. Olsen was central to opening a recent F.B.I. investigation that led to the search of a Fulton County, Ga., election office in January.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

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Mr. Olsen was a pro-Trump lawyer who in late 2020 contacted senior Justice Department officials on Mr. Trump’s behalf, pushing them to file a motion to nullify the election with the Supreme Court.

After 2020, he worked with Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and a longtime election denier, to bring many unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the results of other elections and the use of voting machines, based on debunked conspiracy theories. While representing Kari Lake, a former candidate for governor in Arizona, he was hit with sanctions for making false and misleading claims.

Ms. Lake, who tried to reverse her defeat in the 2022 race, has served as the effective head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. A judge ruled Ms. Lake’s appointment invalid, but the administration says she still works for the organization.

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Clay Parikh

Special government employee with a background in cybersecurity

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Mr. Parikh is working closely with Mr. Olsen to re-examine claims of fraud in the 2020 election, and was cited as a supposed expert in the F.B.I. affidavit supporting the search of Fulton County’s elections office.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

Mr. Parikh took part in Ms. Lake’s failed efforts to reverse her defeat in the 2022 Arizona governor’s race, and has served as a witness in other cases brought by Mr. Olsen challenging the use of voting machines.

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Office of the Director of National Intelligence

In his first term, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that gave the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the ability to make determinations about foreign interference in elections. Such declarations could allow the president to declare national emergencies surrounding elections.

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What happened in 2020

Several advisers to Mr. Trump tried to push the intelligence community to determine that foreign entities had meddled in the election, in an effort to justify a move to seize voting machines. The consensus opinion among intelligence agencies was ultimately that countries like China and Russia had not interfered in a significant way.

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John Ratcliffe, then the director of national intelligence, disagreed about China’s supposed role, but did not issue his dissent until Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the election had been certified.

Tulsi Gabbard

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Director of national intelligence

Ms. Gabbard is helping oversee the Trump administration’s effort to investigate supposed voting irregularities in Georgia, and was present at the F.B.I. search of the Fulton County elections office. Her office also recently seized voting machines in Puerto Rico, to examine them for vulnerability to hacking by foreign entities.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

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Unlike others Mr. Trump has installed in government, Ms. Gabbard did not have a history of supporting Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud. She started to back such claims publicly as the director of national intelligence.

The Justice Department has the power to open investigations into allegations of fraud in elections, a move that could, if nothing else, undermine faith in the results of the upcoming midterms.

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What happened in 2020

After the 2020 election, Mr. Trump pressured the department to investigate his baseless claims that the voting had been marred by fraud. He wanted to use those inquiries to persuade state legislatures to refuse to certify his defeat.

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Attorney General William P. Barr rejected Mr. Trump’s claims that the count had been compromised, and refused suggestions from the president’s advisers to seize voting machines. Mr. Barr was replaced by Jeffrey Rosen, the deputy attorney general, in late December of that year. He similarly resisted Mr. Trump’s efforts.

Pam Bondi

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Attorney general

Last spring, the Justice Department began seeking detailed voter roll data from states, to compile a national voting database. Under Ms. Bondi, it has sued at least 29 states and territories in an attempt to force them to turn over data.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

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As a private lawyer, Ms. Bondi helped the Trump campaign seek to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. She appeared at a news conference with the Trump ally Rudolph W. Giuliani, and falsely claimed that Mr. Trump had won Pennsylvania, even though not all of the ballots had been counted.

Ms. Bondi later served as the litigation chairwoman for the Trump-allied America First Policy Institute, which brought a series of lawsuits seeking to hinder ballot box access or disenfranchise groups of voters.

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Kash Patel

F.B.I. director

Mr. Patel is overseeing a criminal investigation into supposed irregularities in the 2020 presidential election that has so far led to the seizure of voting records at the Fulton County election center in Georgia, and the subpoenaing of records in Maricopa County, Ariz.

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Prior support for claims of election fraud

During his Senate confirmation hearing last year, Mr. Patel sidestepped questions about whether Mr. Trump had lost the 2020 election, responding only that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been certified and sworn in as president.

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Last summer, Mr. Patel promoted an unsubstantiated theory on his social media account that thousands of fake driver’s licenses seized by customs officials in 2020 were part of a Chinese plot to throw the election that year to Mr. Biden.

Harmeet K. Dhillon

Assistant attorney general for civil rights

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Ms. Dhillon has led the Justice Department effort to obtain complete, unredacted voter roll lists from every state in the country, including suing more than half the states in an attempt to force them to turn over the data.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

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Ms. Dhillon advocated efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, and encouraged people to donate to his legal defense fund. Shortly after the election, she appeared on Fox Business urging Mr. Trump’s appointees on the Supreme Court to “step in and do something” to help him win the race.

She also served as a campaign lawyer for Ms. Lake and assisted her efforts to overturn her 2022 Arizona governor’s race loss.

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Eric Neff

Acting Chief, voting section

Mr. Neff leads the voting section at the Justice Department, which is supposed to enforce the civil provisions of the federal laws that protect the right to vote.

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Prior support for claims of election fraud

As a Los Angeles County prosecutor, Mr. Neff was placed on administrative leave in 2022 after basing a prosecution of the chief executive of the election management company Konnech on tips from a right-wing group, True the Vote, which has promoted conspiracy theories centered on election fraud.

Mr. Neff also served at one point as a lawyer for Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock chief executive, who advised the Trump administration to seize voting machines during the 2020 election.

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Christopher Gardner

Trial attorney, voting section

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Mr. Gardner is taking part in a Justice Department effort to secure voting records from Georgia officials.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

As a private lawyer, Mr. Gardner helped file a lawsuit seeking to prevent officials in Georgia from certifying the state’s 2020 election results. He also worked with other Trump-allied lawyers, including Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman and Cleta Mitchell, to provide legal advice to a fake slate of electors in Georgia. Those electors claimed that Mr. Trump won the state even though Mr. Biden actually prevailed.

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Megan Frederick

Trial attorney

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Ms. Frederick participated in a Justice Department effort demanding voter rolls from officials in the District of Columbia.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

Ms. Frederick served as a lawyer representing the Trump campaign during the Dane County, Wis., recount in 2020, and took part in efforts to challenge more than 200,000 ballots in the state.

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She also worked as a leader of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, which is part of the election-denying Election Integrity Network, an umbrella organization run by Ms. Mitchell, a stalwart pro-Trump lawyer who tried to overturn his election loss.

Joseph Voiland

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Trial attorney, civil rights division

Mr. Voiland is active in the Justice Department’s efforts to gain access to Wisconsin’s voter registration list.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

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Mr. Voiland, a former Wisconsin county judge, served as a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign, and sought to have thousands of ballots in the state thrown out.

Sigal Chattah

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First assistant U.S. attorney in Nevada

Last July, Ms. Chattah pushed the F.B.I. to investigate claims that illegal immigrants in her state had cast ballots in the 2020 election, according to Reuters. After a federal judge ruled that she had been unlawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney, the Justice Department put her in the role of first assistant and gave her a second title as special attorney.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

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Ms. Chattah joined the Republican National Committee in 2023 to advocate taking a more hard-line stance on elections, and to oust its chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, who was seen by Trump loyalists as not doing enough to help Mr. Trump overturn the election results in 2020.

Ms. Chattah was a defense lawyer for one of the people who served as a so-called fake elector in Nevada in 2020. She also sued unsuccessfully to stop a bill that made it illegal in Nevada to harass election officials.

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Jeanine Pirro

U.S. attorney in Washington

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Ms. Pirro oversees a key federal prosecutor’s office that handles many matters related to the administration of the government.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

After Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, Ms. Pirro, then a Fox News host, used her show to amplify false allegations that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had been used to rig the tally. Fox ultimately paid nearly $780 million to settle claims by Dominion that the network had defamed it through its coverage.

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Department of Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security oversees multiple departments that have critical roles in election security, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

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It has also been leading a review of election records, looking for proof of noncitizen voting. (It has not found much.)

What happened in 2020

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In the immediate aftermath of the election, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement saying that the election was “the most secure in American history.” It contradicted claims of interference and noted that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

The statement drew the ire of Mr. Trump, who fired the agency’s director, Chris Krebs, days later.

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Markwayne Mullin

Secretary of Homeland Security

The Senate confirmed Mr. Mullin on March 23. During his confirmation hearing, he suggested that he supported the federal investigations into the 2020 election.

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Prior support for claims of election fraud

After the 2020 election, Mr. Mullin was one of the more prolific voices in Congress calling for further investigations into vote tallies. He signed a letter to Mr. Trump asking him to direct the attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate the 2020 election.

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Heather Honey

Deputy assistant secretary for election integrity

Ms. Honey has asserted that the Trump administration could declare a “national emergency” to justify dictating new election rules to state and local governments.

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Prior support for claims of election fraud

Ms. Honey repeatedly made claims of voting irregularities in Pennsylvania during the 2020 election, and was centrally involved in the recount of Arizona’s vote tally. She also served as a witness for Ms. Lake’s failed 2022 election challenge in Arizona in a case in which Mr. Olsen worked as a lawyer. She was a leader in Ms. Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network.

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Marci McCarthy

Director of public affairs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

The agency works to help secure election systems and assets like voting machines.

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Prior support for claims of election fraud

Ms. McCarthy also worked closely with Ms. Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network and helped place far-right activists on the local election board in DeKalb County, Ga. She was instrumental in forcing out a member of the Georgia State Election Board who voted against a rule to end mail voting.

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Gregg Phillips

Associate administrator of FEMA’s office of response and recovery

While the Federal Emergency Management Agency plays no formal role in assisting elections, its Homeland Security Grant Program has been used for cybersecurity and other election protections in the past, including in 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

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Prior support for claims of election fraud

After the 2016 election, Mr. Phillips claimed without evidence that millions of illegal immigrants had cast votes — an assertion later amplified by Mr. Trump. Leading up to the 2020 election, he worked with the right-wing group True the Vote to attack mail voting as fraudulent.

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He also served as the executive producer on the movie “2000 Mules,” a documentary by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza that falsely claimed that a network of “mules” had illegally gathered large numbers of ballots to swing the 2020 election away from Mr. Trump.

David Harvilicz

Assistant secretary for cyber, infrastructure, risk and resilience policy

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Mr. Harvilicz oversees policies for maintaining the security of the country’s election infrastructure, including voting machines.

Prior support for claims of election fraud

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Mr. Harvilicz has done business with James Penrose, a former intelligence officer who took part in several efforts to seize voting machines after the 2020 election in an attempt to undermine Mr. Trump’s defeat in the race, according to ProPublica. He has also called for doing away with voting machines, and has questioned victories of Democratic candidates.

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Stefanik grills University of Michigan leader on lack of audit after string of Chinese national arrests

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Stefanik grills University of Michigan leader on lack of audit after string of Chinese national arrests

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Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., continued her relentless cross examinations of college administrators Thursday – this time pressing Michigan’s interim president Domenico Grasso on Chinese student spies at the university.

Stefanik wanted to know why Chinese nationals in Michigan were accused of spying on America and his university is not auditing potential national security vulnerabilities in research there.

“Last year, facing congressional pressure, Michigan ended its partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University after five Chinese students were caught spying at night and taking illegal photos of U.S. military drills and equipment on the remote Michigan installation Camp Grayling,” Stefanik said. “These students lied and misled U.S. law enforcement about their motives and later conspired on the CCP-controlled messaging app WeChat to clear their phones and cameras of photos and evidence.”

“Has the university conducted a full audit to determine what intellectual property or federally funded research was compromised?” the congresswoman asked.

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CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN STUDENTS CHARGED AFTER ALLEGEDLY SPYING ON MILITARY BASE

Rep. Elise Stefanik questioned interim University of Michigan president Domenico Grasso during a hearing Thursday, March 26, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (C-SPAN)

Without an audit, Grasso responded, “we are unaware of any research that was compromised by these individual students,” noting the alleged spying occurred “miles and miles away from campus.”

But Stefanik was nonplussed by the answer.

“I understand Camp Grayling is off campus, but was there an audit conducted?”

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TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON PLAN FOR 600,000 CHINESE STUDENT VISAS DESPITE MAGA BACKLASH

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., has made headlines with her questioning U.S. academic leaders, during House Education and the Workforce Committee hearings. (Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg)

Grasso admitted Michigan did not.

“Well, they were not researchers,” he said, doubting “they did something nefarious.” “They were undergraduate students. So, we did not do an audit.”

And, adding, “they did not have any access to any of our research.”

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FOREIGN-BACKED INFLUENCE IN SCHOOLS TO BE EXPOSED UNDER GOP ‘TRACE ACT’ GIVING PARENTS ACCESS TO CURRICULUM

But Stefanik noted they were found to be spying.

“Well, they did do something nefarious off campus,” she said. “I think it would be important for the university to ensure that there is a full audit conducted to make sure that no research, that they didn’t take any nefarious acts there.”

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Grasso admitted he does “not know what all of our researchers are involved in,” but doubted the Department of War would clear them for access to U.S. secrets on campus.

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“Congresswoman, we have improved, and we’re continuing to improve our background checks for all of our researchers and students that come into the country, but we also have to partner more closely with our federal intelligence community to make sure that these students are vetted before they’re allowed to get visas to enter our country as well,” he concluded.

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Trump projects confidence, claims Iran is ‘begging’ for deal, but war exit remains murky

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Trump projects confidence, claims Iran is ‘begging’ for deal, but war exit remains murky

President Trump on Thursday continued projecting confidence in the U.S. war effort in Iran, suggesting online and during a high-level Cabinet meeting that Iran has been “obliterated,” that its leaders were “begging” for a deal, and that the U.S. is “roaming free” over Iran and “NEEDS NOTHING” from its European allies.

His description of the war as all but finished — he actually said “we’ve won” — stood in contrast to the facts on the ground, where Iran continued to launch attacks and threaten oil tanker traffic in the vital Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. continued sending troops and warships to what is already the largest U.S. military buildup in the Middle East in decades.

Trump’s framing of the conflict also contrasted with that of Iranian officials, who have remained publicly defiant, downplayed negotiations and outwardly rejected several of Trump’s conditions for ending the war — as Trump himself acknowledged, accusing them of saying one thing in private and another in public.

“They better get serious soon, before it is too late,” the president wrote on social media, “because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty.”

“They are begging to make a deal, not me,” Trump reiterated later Thursday, while hosting his first Cabinet meeting since the war began. “Anybody that sees what is happening understands why they are begging to make a deal.”

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Trump asserted that Iran’s military capabilities have been destroyed, and that the American mission is “ahead of schedule.” He said American forces were operating without opposition over Iran, and “there’s not a damn thing they can do about it” because they’ve been “beat to s—.”

Trump’s outward confidence, a defining feature of the war campaign that has been consistently echoed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other administration loyalists, continued despite growing concerns this week in Congress — and not only from Democrats.

Several Republicans emerged from a classified war briefing Wednesday clearly frustrated with the administration for not providing a clearer picture of the path out of the now monthlong war, or clear answers on whether it planned to deploy ground troops.

“We want to know more about what’s going on,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “We’re just not getting enough answers.”

“I can see why he might have said that,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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Democrats have hammered the president — contrasting the war and its massive budget with rising fuel costs for average Americans and lamenting the deaths of U.S. service members.

“Thirteen American lives lost and tens of billions of taxpayer dollars spent in just three weeks since Donald Trump plunged us into war without congressional authorization. There is still no plan, no clear justification, and no end in sight,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said. “Americans called for lower prices, not endless wars.”

For weeks, Trump, Hegseth and other war leaders such as Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have focused on U.S. wins in the conflict — tallying up Iran’s sunken ships and grounded planes, assassinated leaders and undermined missile capabilities.

In recent days, Trump has suggested that, because of those wins, Iran is buckling. He has said the U.S. is pushing a 15-point plan that will forever block Iran from developing a nuclear weapon or threatening the U.S. or its allies. And he and others in his administration have accused the media of ignoring battlefield wins to harp on losses instead.

Israel, America’s major partner in the conflict, has projected similar confidence while showing no signs of slowing its attacks on Iran. On Thursday it announced it had killed several senior Iranian naval commanders, including Commodore Alireza Tangsiri, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ navy.

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Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said the deaths should send a “clear message” that Israel will continue to hunt down top Iranian military officials. Iran did not immediately acknowledge Tangsiri’s death.

The head of U.S. Central Command, Adm. Brad Cooper, praised Tangsiri’s killing, said U.S. strikes would continue, and called on Iranian fighters to “immediately abandon their post and return home to avoid further risk of unnecessary injury or death.”

Meanwhile, death, destruction and environmental and economic damage from the war spread far beyond Iran, where officials recently increased their estimated death toll to nearly 2,000.

Israel was fighting off a barrage of incoming missiles Thursday, with booms heard in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and an impact reported in the central town of Kafr Qassem. Israel was also continuing its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the death toll had risen to 1,116, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Thursday.

Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Tahsin al Khafaj on Thursday said 23 people had been wounded in a Wednesday strike on a military clinic in western Iraq’s Anbar province.

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Israeli soldiers grieve during the funeral of Staff Sgt. Ori Greenberg, 21, at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday.

(Odd Andersen / AFP via Getty Images)

Thousands of additional U.S. troops are on their way to the region, while many of the tens of thousands already stationed there have been displaced into hotels and other temporary housing — diminishing their war-fighting capabilities — by ongoing Iranian attacks that have left the 13 regional military bases they normally live on “all but uninhabitable,” the New York Times reported.

Iran announced Thursday that it had launched drone and missile attacks on a U.S. military base in Kuwait and a separate air base used by American forces in Saudi Arabia.

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Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, the secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, accused Iran of charging fees for ships to safely transit the Strait of Hormuz, continuing the economic toll on global oil supplies. Environmental experts warned of massive pollution from burning oil and gas fields.

France’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that nearly three dozen countries had joined military talks about how to reopen the strait “once the intensity of hostilities has sufficiently decreased.”

Russia, emboldened by the Iran war, which has drawn resources away from Ukraine and led the U.S. to ease sanctions on Russian oil, has launched a renewed spring offensive against Ukraine.

The distance between U.S. and Iranian messaging about the war and their negotiations to end it — which foreign officials have said are occurring through intermediaries — has contributed to the tensions and the reluctance of allies to get involved, with some citing similar frustrations as Republicans in Congress this week.

Many allies have largely stayed out of the conflict despite Trump vacillating between demanding their help and insisting it isn’t necessary.

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In one of his posts to social media Thursday morning, Trump blasted allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, for having “DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO HELP” in the conflict, and said the U.S. would “never forget.”

Asked during his Cabinet meeting about his desire to end the war soon, Trump said he was “the opposite of desperate” — “I don’t care,” he said — and that there “are other targets that we want to hit before we leave.”

Trump said that when the “right deal” is made with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz will reopen — while insisting that Iran no longer has any “mine droppers” that would threaten merchant vessels passing through the key oil route.

Steve Witkoff, one of Trump’s top advisors leading the negotiations in the Middle East, said the Iranians were looking for an “offramp,” that Pakistan is serving as a mediator between Washington and Tehran, and that the 15-point plan Trump had mentioned “forms the framework for a peace deal.”

“These are sensitive, diplomatic discussions and you have directed us to maintain confidentiality on the specific terms and not negotiate through the news media, as others do,” Witkoff said. “We will see where things lead and if we can convince Iran that this is the inflection point, with no good alternatives for them other than more death and destruction.”

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Trump has declined to say whom Washington is negotiating with in Iran, but described them as “very smart,” “not fools,” and “very lousy fighters, but great negotiators.”

He also said he knows they are “the right people” for the U.S. to be dealing with because they had given him a “present” — and proved they are in control — by allowing “eight big boats of oil” travel through the strait this week.

Asked if he intended to send U.S. troops into Iran to take its enriched uranium, he called it a “ridiculous question” that he wouldn’t answer.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he is confident that more merchant vessels will soon be able to safely pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and energy prices will drop when the war ends.

“Many people, especially the Democrats, underestimate the will of the American people for short-term volatility for 50 years of safety that we are going to have on the other side of this,” Bessent said.

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Hegseth repeatedly slammed the media for framing the war effort as floundering or unfocused, saying Iran’s “air defenses are gone,” its leaders hiding in “underground bunkers,” and its fighters losing morale.

He said Iranian officials in private are admitting “very heavy losses,” and that the U.S. and the world are benefiting from having Trump, whom he called the “ultimate deal maker,” working toward a peace deal.

In the meantime, he said, the U.S. military will “continue negotiating with bombs.”

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