The older brother of former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been charged after Honolulu police say he allegedly tried to lure several children to his Waikīkī hotel room by offering them gum and money, as his family says he is continuing to receive psychiatric treatment.

Batarti Gabbard, 55, was charged with second-degree custodial interference after the July 12 “stranger danger” incident at a Waikīkī hotel pool, according to police.

Honolulu police allege Gabbard approached several children, including a 9-year-old boy, asked for their names, wrote them in a notebook and offered them money and gum if they would accompany him to his hotel room.

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Fox News Digital obtained new comment from Gabbard’s father, Hawaii state Sen. Mike Gabbard, who declined to discuss the allegations, but confirmed his son continues to receive medical and psychiatric treatment.

“We love him, and asked him to follow the protocol at the hospital, which he says he will do,” Mike Gabbard told Fox News Digital. “We’re praying for his speedy recovery, and would appreciate the prayers of others.”

Fox News Digital also reached out to Tulsi Gabbard through her public office and left a voicemail requesting comment.

She did not immediately respond.

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Police said the incident occurred around 2 p.m. on July 12 at the pool area of an unnamed Waikīkī hotel, where Batarti Gabbard allegedly approached several children.

According to police, the children refused and Gabbard walked away. 

A 42-year-old woman reported the incident to police.

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According to KITV, Gabbard had also been arrested July 16 on charges of theft.

He pleaded not guilty to the theft charge Friday morning, was released and is scheduled to appear in court Aug. 14 in that case.

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KITV reported that no court date has yet been set on the custodial interference charge.

Honolulu Police confirmed to Fox News Digital that Gabbard is no longer in custody.

Thirty years ago this fall, a Republican politician cried electoral fraud after losing a close race.

Orange County Rep. Bob Dornan couldn’t accept the most logical explanations for why Loretta Sanchez beat him in a historic upset: that voters had tired of his polarizing politics. That his Latino-majority district wanted one of their own to represent them. That he was an ideologue who never brought anything back from D.C. for his constituents.

Instead, Dornan and his supporters settled on the craziest excuse of them all: Illegal immigrants.

California voters were passing anti-immigrant laws by the boatful, so Dornan’s fevered tales about nonprofits registering noncitizens to vote and take him down landed with Republicans. A compliant Congress investigated Dornan’s claims, while local lawmakers proposed bills that would force voters to show government-issued identification every time they cast a ballot — a voter suppression tactic going back to the segregationist South.

The congressional investigation flopped like a soccer player fishing to draw a red card, finally concluding in 1998. Yes, noncitizens did vote for Sanchez, but only an infinitesimal number — less than 1% of the total votes tallied and not enough to overturn the results. No one was charged for illegally voting on purpose or improperly registering noncitizens to vote.

When Dornan ran again in 1998, with volunteers vowing to pursue any election irregularities, Sanchez walloped him, and he was swept into the dustbin of political history.

I teach this episode in my O.C. history college classes as a case study in what happens when political parties succumb to the spell of a vindictive demagogue who blames everyone for their failures except themselves. I also point out that Dornan had the last laugh: the idea that illegal immigrants regularly vote in elections, throwing them toward Democrats, has become gospel for many Republicans.

And here we are.

On Thursday, President Trump’s obsession over losing to Joe Biden in 2020 reached a phlegmatic nadir with a speech on debunked election fraud theories that weaved in everything from communist China to deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to — who else? — alleged noncitizen voters.

The tirade was so pathetic and noneventful that most networks didn’t bother to air it. Even Fox News host Sean Hannity — whose tongue is probably two parts shoe polish after spending the last decade as Trump’s personal spit shine — moved on just minutes after Trump finished.

The president insisted that the U.S. Senate pass a bill ahead of this November’s midterms, mandating in the name of election integrity that voters show proof of citizenship before casting a ballot.

In California, a clown car of MAGA loyalists — state Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, state Sen. Tony Strickland, wannabe Southern California U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — are pushing something similar. Proposition 39 would require California election officials to verify the citizenship of registered voters and require voters to show government-issued identification when they cast a ballot.

By law, voters in federal elections must be U.S. citizens. Only a handful of municipalities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Despite Trump’s trumpeting of supposed evidence that 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, actual instances of them casting a ballot are as rare today as in Dornan’s time.

That hasn’t stopped Trump and his lackeys from claiming, as Dornan and his supporters did, that they are trying to restore faith in a system corrupted by liberals and their undocumented puppets. But, just like back then, this amounts to a dog whistle for people freaked out about changing demographics and massive GOP midterm losses.

It’s the last, most dangerous gasp of a wheezing political movement whose supporters are clinging to power at all costs and just can’t understand why more and more voters are tired of Trump’s flailing foreign policy and failing economy.

These people are so delusional that they point to last month’s California primaries as proof of election fraud, arguing that the results in two prominent races should have been different.

No Republican has won a statewide election in 20 years, so it’s not surprising that Republican Steve Hilton finished second to Democrat Xavier Becerra in the gubernatorial primary, with both advancing to the general election. Nor was it a shock that in the primary for Los Angeles mayor, progressive incumbent Karen Bass and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman finished first and second over Republican reality television star Spencer Pratt.

That didn’t stop Trump from insisting that both Republicans should have won outright and crying conspiracy when they didn’t. The president continued his laughable tune in his White House speech.

“Took a month to count the votes,” he whined about California’s sloth-like approach to counting ballots. “I wonder what they were doing. This is worse than any Third World country. There’s no Third World country that has elections like we have.”

Actually, many Third World countries elect despots like Trump — but that’s neither here nor there.

A May poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Proposition 39 was in a statistical dead heat, with 49% of voters favoring it and 51% opposed. All Prop. 39’s opponents have to do is cite Trump’s stark-raving mad comments about electoral fraud, and support for the ballot initiative will melt faster than the Sierra snowpack.

The Republican crusade against imaginary noncitizen voters may pay off in the short run but will inevitably, spectacularly backfire.

Look at what happened in my native Orange County. Sanchez’s victory was the first ripple in a blue wave that eventually turned O.C. purple. Our once-mighty GOP is now increasingly isolated to wealthier pockets of the county and no longer commands national attention — hell, they couldn’t even deliver O.C. to Trump in any of his elections.

The crazy thing is, when Republicans put in the work to appeal to immigrant and Latino voters instead of obsessing about how they’re supposedly anti-democracy invaders, it pays off. Just look at 2024, when a record number of Latino GOP legislators won seats in California and Trump won a larger share of the national Latino electorate than any Republican presidential candidate ever had.

That happened because the party largely stayed quiet on noncitizen voting and focused on what swing voters wanted to hear: a promise to clamp down on unchecked migration and too much wokeness, while fattening average Americans’ pocketbooks.

Trump’s success with Latino voters seemed to represent a tectonic shift in American politics. Now, it feels like an aberration.

Trump still doesn’t seem to get how desperate the situation is for Republicans, just four months before election day, and how much of it is of his own making.

Near the end of his speech, he sputtered, “The only reason you wouldn’t do [mandated voter ID] is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad, and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away or can’t get elected any other way.”

Paging Bob Dornan …

The Maine Democratic Party unveiled its plan to replace Graham Platner, the Senate nominee who withdrew from his race after a woman accused him of sexual assault. The replacement process is scheduled to happen at a remarkably fast pace — within just three weeks of Mr. Platner’s withdrawal.

If all goes to plan, the eventual Democratic nominee will have just under 100 days to campaign against Senator Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, in what is expected to be one of the most competitive Senate races of the midterms.

Replacing a Senate candidate is rare, and procedures vary by state and by timing. Here is how the Maine Democratic Party plans to pick Mr. Platner’s replacement.

July 15: Candidacy deadline

Twelve Democrats have declared themselves candidates. Nine who had submitted their intent to run by Tuesday were invited to a debate hosted by News Center Maine on Thursday.

At the debate, the candidates tried to embrace Mr. Platner’s grass-roots energy while not condoning his behavior, and they assailed Ms. Collins for siding with President Trump on various issues. They also spent much of the debate denouncing the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Maine, in light of the fatal shooting in Biddeford on Monday.

July 18-19: County meetings

Each of Maine’s 16 counties will host a meeting this weekend, either in person or virtually, to select a total of 500 delegates to attend the state convention on July 25. The delegates will not be pledged to a particular candidate, but many delegate candidates have made their preferences known.

Thousands of Mainers have registered as a candidate to be one of the delegates or as a participant in these meetings.

Each county will select an allotted number of delegates based on the number of Democratic votes in the 2024 presidential election in that county. Cumberland County, which includes Portland, the most populous city in Maine, will elect the most delegates.

The Maine Democratic Party will send another 101 delegates from its state committee.

July 20: Signature deadline

Senate candidates must gather at least 500 signatures. They need to have at least 50 signatures from at least eight different counties.

July 23: Debate

Two days before the state convention, CNN and The Bangor Daily News will host a two-hour debate. There will be a live audience that will include some county delegates.

July 25: State convention

Delegates will gather at the convention in Bangor to vote for the nominee to replace Mr. Platner.

Voting will happen in rounds until one candidate reaches a majority. Here’s how that voting process could work.

The Maine Democratic Party must submit the nominee’s name to Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, by July 27. Ms. Bellows is also one of the candidates to replace Mr. Platner.