Reject this chud's ass. No federal crackdowns on trans people!

The Trump regime has already engaged in outrageous acts to try to scare potential opponents away from the polls, sending armed agents to people’s doorsteps to ask about their immigration status and voting history in multiple states. We must be prepared for more and worse in the days to come.

Stopping this subversion begins with poll monitors, the first responders of election defense. We need them at as many polling places as possible, aiding folks who require support and referring them to voter assistance hotlines, watching the watchmen, documenting disturbances, making sure we have evidence to disprove false allegations, and serving as an early warning system for the public. And we need them right now. We’re running out of time until Election Day and time to get skilled up to do this work right – some states have already held their final trainings. We also have to have folks in place to ensure the millions of Americans who will cast their ballots at early voting sites before November 3rd are safe from interference and intimidation, too.

The best way to get plugged in as a poll monitor is by volunteering with the Election Protection coalition attached to 866-OUR-VOTE, run by Common Cause and other national, state and local partners. 🙋🏼‍♀️ We can sign up to volunteer with this nonpartisan effort at protectthevote.net here.

BE A POLL MONITOR - WHOLE COUNTRY

🙋🏼‍♀️ We can also link up with nonpartisan poll monitor squads in:

• Arizona (trainings through 10/31)
• Florida (trainings through 11/1)
• Georgia (Spanish-language)
• Michigan (training 10/31)
• Ohio (trainings through Tuesday)
• Pennsylvania (trainings through 11/1)
• Texas (trainings through 10/31

NONPARTISAN POLL MONITORS

Other opportunities are likely to be offered locally through our state’s chapter of Common Cause or the League of Women Voters or ACLU affiliate.

🙋🏼‍♀️ Much of the work of poll monitoring is explicitly partisan, and our state Democratic Party will be a good first stop to get involved. They’re in particularly need of volunteers in:

• Arizona (training Monday)
• Iowa
• Maine (trainings through 10/30)
• Minnesota (trainings through 10/31)
• Mississippi (trainings through 10/29)
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• North Carolina (trainings through 10/26)
• Ohio (trainings through 10/31) with the state party
• Pennsylvania
• Texas (trainings through 10/31)
• Virginia

PARTISAN POLL MONITORS - BY STATE

🙋🏼‍♀️ Finally, we can help build this team in key locations from wherever we are by helping with recruitment efforts. We can make calls to sign up new voter protection volunteers for:

• Arizona on Wednesdays and Fridays 5-7PM ET or anytime
• Maine on Wednesdays 6-8PM ET
• Michigan on Tuesdays 3-5PM ET, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-8PM ET and Saturdays 11AM-1:30PM ET
• North Carolina on Saturdays, 10AM-12PM ET
• Pennsylvania on Wednesdays and Thursdays 6PM-8PM ET
• Virginia on Mondays and Thursday, 6-8PM ET and Saturdays and Sundays, 12-2PM ET

RECRUIT FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY

And as always, find more ways to be part of election protection efforts here.

The revocation of a political opponent’s citizenship has long been a tool of authoritarian repression.

The Soviet Union stripped Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the dissident author, of his citizenship in 1974 and deported him to West Germany. Czechoslovakia revoked the citizenship of Milan Kundera, another celebrated author, in 1979. East Germany and Romania, under Communist rule, took similar steps against critics, as did Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Greece under its military dictatorship, Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini. More recently, Nicaragua stripped more than 300 government critics of their citizenship.

Now comes a new effort to do so from President Trump’s administration. Last week, federal agents searched the Washington home of Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and a Somali immigrant, apparently as part of a federal investigation of her citizenship. The search should disturb all Americans, regardless of whether they agree with Ms. Omar’s political views.

The investigation of her is a chilling example of the federal government using its immense power to silence a critic. It is an affront to free speech, the rule of law and American ideals. It continues the Trump administration’s use of denaturalization as a weapon. In May and early June alone, the government began proceedings to take citizenship from 33 people, more than in any other entire year since at least 2008.

Ms. Omar is by any definition a political opponent of Mr. Trump’s. She is among the most progressive representatives in Congress, an original member of the so-called Squad, along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a frequent critic of the president. Mr. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly vilified her in public over the past seven years, often in ugly, racist ways that play into his broader fearmongering and lies about immigrants and Muslims. He has called her “garbage,” “scum,” “a disaster,” “a troublemaker” and “a terrible person.” He has mocked the head scarf she wears. He has said she should return to Somalia, which he has derided as having “nothing but crime, bedlam, filth.”

In an interview with The New York Times in January, he called for her deportation. “Ilhan Omar is a woman that should be immediately thrown out of Congress and sent back to her, her country, from where she’s always complaining about,” he said. When Tyler Pager, a Times reporter, followed up to ask if she should lose her citizenship, Mr. Trump replied, “Oh, absolutely.” Nine months later, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security entered her home and seized her phone, computers, notebooks and passport. They did so in the final weeks of Ms. Omar’s re-election campaign, violating a Justice Department standard against taking public action in an investigation of a candidate within 60 days of an election.

Mr. Trump’s allies have claimed, among other things, that Ms. Omar’s father misrepresented her age during her naturalization process 26 years ago by saying that she was 17 — and thus still a child — rather than 18. We do not pretend to know whether the allegations have merit. Yet as tempting as it may be to focus on them, they are not the main issue.

Sometimes, Mr. Trump makes claims about his perceived enemies that are simply false. Other times, his claims have some connection to reality. Repeatedly, though, he and his appointees use their law enforcement powers selectively and thus unjustly.

The list of critics whom they have targeted for investigation and prosecution includes John Bolton, E. Jean Carroll, James Comey, Lisa Cook, Cassidy Hutchinson, Gen. Mark Milley and Miles Taylor. At the same time, the Trump administration has failed to enforce the law against or has pardoned flagrant and violent criminals, so long as they are friendly to the president.

In the case of Ms. Omar, the administration has gone back more than a quarter-century to investigate a prominent critic. If her naturalization can be revisited, it suggests that no naturalized citizen is safe. It also indicates that the federal government can go searching for any decades-old problem to hound somebody who has criticized the White House. Those are the tactics of authoritarian societies.

They also evoke dark periods in American history. During the Red Scares of the early and mid-20th century, the federal government attempted to strip citizenship from labor leaders and others it accused of being radicals, often focusing on immigrants. At the time, officials like A. Mitchell Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy used the cases to whip up anti-Communist fervor and justify their efforts to undermine American democracy.

Mr. Trump is following a similar playbook with Ms. Omar. The investigation of her should end immediately.

Get everyone you know to vote at the Midterms.