Friday, February 20, 2026
MUST-SEE warning from US Supreme Court
Anger as Trump FDA retreats from plan to ban artificial colors in food
Anger as Trump FDA retreats from plan to ban artificial colors in food
“The FDA announced it will allow food companies to label products as “no artificial colors” even if they contain potentially harmful substances like titanium dioxide. This decision, criticized by health experts, is seen as a retreat from a previous pledge to ban artificial dyes and could mislead consumers. While some naturally derived dyes are safer, others, like titanium dioxide, pose health risks and are banned in the EU.
Experts say new labeling could deceive consumers as dangerous substances still allowed under new rules
In a further retreat from its pledge to ban artificial dyes from food, Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it would loosen labeling requirements to allow companies to state “no artificial colors”, even though products may contain some dangerous substances such as titanium dioxide.
The FDA in early February announced it would allow food makers to claim “no artificial colors” as long as the dyes are not petroleum-based, but health experts say even some naturally based additives present health risks, and the labeling would deceive consumers.
The move comes after the agency in 2025 began pressuring companies to phase out petroleum-based dyes, but stopped short of putting in place a ban. Removing toxins from food is a cornerstone of the Robert F Kennedy led Maha movement. Kennedy is the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which holds the FDA, and he quickly zeroed in on dye upon taking office last year.
The FDA agreed to what critics label a “handshake” with big food to stop using the dyes, though Kennedy framed it as “an understanding”. Some candy makers still are refusing to fully stop using artificial dyes.
The latest decision around labeling “is going to cause confusion and allow some companies to mislead folks about the colors that are present in their foods”, said Thomas Galligan, principal scientist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which researches food dyes.
“It’s frustrating, especially when the rhetoric suggests they are solving the problem, but in practice they’re just letting industry do whatever they want,” Galligan continued, adding that the rules were already so loophole-ridden that there were other ways that companies could deceive consumers. The most effective measure to protect consumers is a ban, he said.
Kennedy defended the move in a statement: “This is real progress. We are making it easier for companies to move away from petroleum-based synthetic colors and adopt safer, naturally derived alternatives. This momentum advances our broader effort to help Americans eat real food and Make America Healthy Again.”
Consumer Brands, a trade group for packaged foods, applauded the move, stating that it “is a positive example of the FDA taking the lead on ingredient safety and transparency”.
Kelly Ryerson, Maha advocate and author, praised the FDA for taking the first step to pressure industry to move away from dyes, calling it “enormous”. But she told the Guardian she is concerned about confusion over the labeling, and added: “I would like to see these things banned permanently.”
Synthetic dyes are linked to ADHD and hyperactivity in children, among other health harms. The FDA banned Red Dye 3 in January 2025, before Kennedy took over the agency, because studies found it likely caused cancer in lab rats.
West Virginia has since banned some synthetic dyes, and Texas passed a law to require warning labels. More than 25 states are considering new bans on synthetic food dyes and other food chemical additives.
Among naturally derived dyes are beet juice, beet powder, algae and butterfly pea flower. While most naturally derived dyes are generally safer than petroleum-based, some can be dangerous.
“As a foundational concept, natural doesn’t mean safe,” Galligan said, which contradicts the average consumers’ assumptions.
He noted that lead and arsenic, two of the planet’s most toxic substances, are naturally occurring, though they are not used in food dyes.
Among natural dyes used in foods that advocates find most concerning is titanium dioxide nanoparticles added to brighten whites, or effectively serve as a primer for other colors. The toxic substance is banned in the European Union for use in food because regulators could not conclude that it is safe, and raised concern that it damages genes.
It is a potential carcinogen that accumulates in organs and is linked toneurotoxicity, intestinal inflammation, reproductive damage, birth defects and other health impacts.
Titanium dioxide is widely used across the US food system. The Environmental Working Group nonprofit has found nearly 2,000 products in which the chemical may be used, though some estimates are as high as 11,000. The largest subgroups included candy, cakes, cookies, and desserts or dessert toppings.
The FDA so far has ignored a petition filed in 2023 by five major US public health advocacy groups that asks it to withdraw its approval of titanium dioxide for use in food.
Meanwhile, naturally derived caramel color can contain 4-MEI, an impurity linked to cancer that is produced during processing. Food companies will be able to state that products that contain these ingredients have “no artificial flavors”.
EWG co-founder Ken Cook said the shift ultimately represents “another broken promise” from Kennedy and Trump.
“They pledged outright bans on dangerous food chemical additives to their Make America Healthy Again base,” Cook said.
“Instead, states are doing the hard work to protect families, while Kennedy settles for handshake deals with big food and chemical companies – agreements with no real accountability and no guarantee they’ll be honored.”
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Trump officials plan to build 5,000-person military base in Gaza, files show
Trump officials plan to build 5,000-person military base in Gaza, files show
“The Trump administration plans to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, spanning over 350 acres, as part of the International Stabilization Force (ISF). The ISF, authorized by the UN Security Council, aims to secure Gaza’s borders, maintain peace, and support Palestinian police forces. The base’s construction, including bunkers and watch towers, is detailed in a Board of Peace contracting document, raising concerns about its legality and funding.
Exclusive: approximately 350-acre compound planned as base for multinational force, according to records reviewed by the Guardian
The Trump administration is planning to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, sprawling more than 350 acres, according to Board of Peace contracting records reviewed by the Guardian.
The site is envisioned as a military operating base for a future International Stabilization Force (ISF), planned as a multinational military force composed of pledged troops. The ISF is part of the newly created Board of Peace which is meant to govern Gaza. The Board of Peace is chaired by Donald Trump and led in part by his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The plans reviewed by the Guardian call for the phased construction of a military outpost that will eventually have a footprint of 1,400 metres by 1,100 metres, ringed by 26 trailer-mounted armored watch towers, a small arms range, bunkers, and a warehouse for military equipment for operations. The entire base will be encircled with barbed wire.
The fortification is planned for an arid stretch of flatlands in southern Gazastrewn with saltbush and white broom shrubs, and littered with twisted metal from years of Israeli bombardment. The Guardian has reviewed video of the area. A source close to the planning tells the Guardian that a small group of bidders – international construction companies with experience in war zones – have already been shown the area in a site visit.
The Indonesian government has reportedly offered to send up to 8,000 troops. Indonesia’s president was one of four south-east Asian leaders scheduled to attend an inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington DC on Thursday.
The UN security council authorized the Board of Peace to establish a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza. The ISF, according to the UN, will be tasked with securing Gaza’s border and maintaining peace within the area. It’s also supposed to protect civilians, and train and support “vetted Palestinian police forces”.
It is unclear what the ISF’s rules of engagement would be if there is combat, renewed bombing by Israel, or attacks by Hamas. Nor is it clear what role the ISF is meant to play in disarming Hamas, an Israeli condition to proceed with Gaza’s reconstruction.
While more than 20 countries have signed up as members of the Board of Peace, much of the world has stayed away. Although it was set up with the UN’s approval, the organization’s charter appears to grant Trump permanent leadership and control.
“The Board of Peace is a kind of legal fiction, nominally with its own international legal personality separate from both the UN and the United States, but in reality it’s just an empty shell for the United States to use as it sees fit,” said Adil Haque, a professor of law at Rutgers University.
Experts say the funding and governance structures are murky, and several contractors have told the Guardian that conversations with US officials are often conducted on Signal rather than over government email.
The military base contracting document was issued by the Board of Peace, according to a person familiar with the process, and prepared with the help of US contracting officials.
The plans say there is to be a network of bunkers each 6 metres by 4 metres and 2.5 metres tall, with elaborate ventilation systems where soldiers can go for protection.
“The Contractor,” says the document, “shall conduct a geophysical survey of the site to identify any subterranean voids, tunnels, or large cavities per phase.” This provision is likely referencing the large network of tunnels Hamas has built in Gaza.
One section of the document describes a “Human Remains Protocol”. “If suspected human remains or cultural artifacts are discovered, all work in the immediate area must cease immediately, the area must be secured, and the Contracting Officer must be notified immediately for direction,” it says. The bodies of about 10,000 Palestinians are believed to be buried under the rubble in Gaza, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
It is unclear who owns the land where the military compound is set to be built, but much of the south Gaza area is currently under Israeli control. The UN estimates that at least 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced during the war.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former peace negotiator, called building a military base on Palestinian land without the government’s approval an act of occupation. “Whose permission did they get to build that military base?”
Officials from US Central Command referred all questions about the military base to the Board of Peace.
A Trump administration official declined to discuss the military base contract: “As the President has said, no US boots will be on the ground. We’re not going to discuss leaked documents.”
In Devastated Gaza, Grandiose Peace Plans Clash With Reality
In Devastated Gaza, Grandiose Peace Plans Clash With Reality
“Despite a cease-fire, Gaza remains devastated, with 600 Palestinians killed since October and 60 million tons of debris to clear. While President Trump’s “Board of Peace” plans for Gaza’s reconstruction, the reality is stark, with ongoing Israeli strikes, a fragmented territory, and a reluctant Hamas. The path to peace hinges on complex issues like Hamas disarmament, demilitarization, and Israeli withdrawal, with no clear resolution in sight.
Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed about 600 people since a cease-fire began, according to health officials in the territory. Many displaced Palestinians are still living in tents. And there are some 60 million tons of war debris to be cleared.
As President Trump prepares for the inaugural gathering of his “Board of Peace” in Washington on Thursday, there are detailed proposals encompassing hopes and dreams for a gleaming new postwar Gaza.
Then there is reality.
“Trump is trying to make things rosy, but as a matter of fact, the situation is still catastrophic,” said Prof. Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political analyst from Gaza City who was displaced from his home during the Israel-Hamas war and now resides in Cairo.
A fragile cease-fire came into force in October, two years after the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel that ignited the war. But the path forward is uncharted, labyrinthine and strewed with obstacles.
“The Trump cease-fire plan is struggling to succeed,” Professor Abusada said, blaming both Hamas and Israel.
Member states of the new international body tasked with rebuilding Gaza have pledged more than $5 billion for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in the enclave, according to Mr. Trump. But that is only a fraction of what is needed. The United Nations has estimated the cost of rebuilding the territory at more than $50 billion.
Countries have also committed thousands of troops and personnel, laying the ground work for an International Stabilization Force meant to “maintain Security,” Mr. Trump said.
American officials are discussing plans to build a military base for peacekeepers in an Israeli-controlled area of southern Gaza, according to several Western diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information publicly.
Slick Power Point presentations paint a picture of a futuristic seaside metropolis. But for now, the Israeli military and private contractors are removing unexploded ordnance and rubble from patches of the Israeli-controlled part of Gaza. There are an estimated 60 million tons of war debris to be cleared away.
Gaza barely has the basics. Experts have produced a comprehensive paper on waste management, according to internal planning documents viewed by The New York Times.
While the war is over, no one would call Gaza safe. Even under the cease-fire, Israeli strikes have killed about 600 Palestinians there, according to local health officials. Their data does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Israel says its near daily strikes are retaliation against militants who violated the truce or to eliminate imminent threats. But children are among the dead.
In all, 72,000 people have been killed since the start of the war, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel says thousands of militants were among those killed.
Israeli forces now control about half the coastal territory, where anti-Hamas militias have taken up arms and looted aid. A weakened but resilient Hamas prevails for now in the other half, where most of the population of two million is living, many still displaced and in tents.
Hamas has pledged to give up the administration of Gaza, but its gunmen are still manning checkpoints, detaining and questioning people, and collecting some fees.
Any real progress in Gaza hinges upon the thorniest issues in Mr. Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. They include disarming Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza and ensuring a withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Hamas is reluctant to part with its weapons. The militants rely on them to control the population, and they are also core to its identity as a fighting force against Israel.
After being caught off-guard by the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead, according to Israeli officials, Israel is deeply skeptical of the group’s intentions.
For this reason, Israel is still barring the entry into Gaza of many so-called “dual use” items, saying they could be used by Hamas for military purposes. The list changes, but now includes wide-diameter steel tent poles, according to several officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
The severe food shortages of the war have eased, but Western officials and aid workers accuse Israel, which strictly controls the flow of all goods into Gaza, of slow-walking other kinds of assistance.
About 80 percent of the buildings in Gaza were damaged or destroyed during the war, according to the United Nations. But Israel has largely limited or delayed the entry of caravans and temporary homes, despite some harsh winter weather, according to the Shelter Cluster, a group of U.N. and humanitarian agencies working on housing solutions.
About 4,000 emergency temporary housing units are either now available or in the pipeline, according to the United Nations. About 200,000 prefab relief housing units are needed to support displaced families, according to Alexander De Croo, a U.N. development official who visited Gaza this week.
The Israeli military unit that oversees the entry of aid to Gaza, known as COGAT, rejected accusations that Israel was preventing or delaying assistance.
“The reality is completely opposite,” it said in a statement, adding that Israel was meeting its commitment under the cease-fire agreement.
The sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt recently reopened for people on foot after being closed for most of the past 20 months. Only a trickle of Gazans, mainly people seeking medical treatment abroad and their caregivers, or residents returning to the enclave from abroad, have been able to cross it.
Making headway is complicated because the main players are reluctant to take risks or make concessions before the other.
“All the structures are ready, but on the ground nothing has changed because one thing is dependent on another,” said Shira Efron, chair of Israel policy at the RAND Corporation, a U.S.-based research institute.
“Reconstruction and Israeli military withdrawal are contingent on disarmament and the deployment of the International Stabilization Force,” she added.
After nearly 20 years of dominating Gaza, Hamas has been trying to tighten its hold on the territory, rather than giving it up, Ms. Efron said. “They are the ones enforcing law and order,” she said.
“Even the seemingly simple challenge of Hamas handing over the civilian rule of Gaza — which they said they’d agree to do — will be complicated,” she said.
Hamas will not be eager to forfeit tax revenues, and it is hard to imagine an orderly transition, she said, noting that the group’s own governance of Gaza was “poor and partial at best.”
The Board of Peace has appointed a committee of Palestinian technocrats as a transitional government to replace Hamas, but they are still based in Cairo.
The committee members are waiting for a safer environment and a loosening of Israeli restrictions on goods that would improve residents’ lives and give them some credibility as they begin to operate in the territory, according to officials and people briefed on their thinking.
“They need to go back with something in their hands to win the hearts and minds of people in Gaza,” Professor Abusada said.
For now, committee members have been attending governance training workshops run by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, according to people briefed on their activities.
Over it all, the threat looms of a return to war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is facing an election this year, says he will give the cease-fire plan a chance. But if Hamas does not agree to disarm, he says, it will be done “the hard way,” with a new Israeli military offensive.
The Trump administration and mediators have been drafting a phased disarmament deal that would see Hamas surrender all weapons capable of striking Israel, but would allow the group to keep some small arms, at least initially, according to officials and people familiar with the proposal.
Mr. Netanyahu appeared to reject that phased approach to disarmament which prioritizes heavy weapons such as rockets. The weapons that Hamas used during the October 2023 attack were Kalashnikov assault rifles, he said, demanding that the group hand over 60,000 of them.
In any case, it’s unclear whether Hamas would even agree to this. Nickolay Mladenov, a former U.N. official now serving as the Board of Peace “high representative” for Gaza, met Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, in Cairo this month to press the group on disarmament. Mr. al-Hayya refused to discuss the issue with him, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about a sensitive matter.
Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
Adam Rasgon is a reporter for The Times in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
Natan Odenheimer is a Times reporter in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.“
Dueling Protests at South Korean Ex-Leader’s Sentencing Highlight Political Rift
Dueling Protests at South Korean Ex-Leader’s Sentencing Highlight Political Rift
“Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life imprisonment for leading an insurrection in 2024. Supporters and opponents of Yoon protested outside the courthouse, with some calling for the death penalty. Yoon’s lawyers criticized the sentence as political, while the governing Democratic Party expressed disappointment it wasn’t harsher.
As a judge reprimanded former President Yoon Suk Yeol for amplifying political tribalism, demonstrators from warring camps blared slogans outside the courtroom.
The dueling protests outside the Seoul courthouse where former President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday were heavy on bitterness and retributive fervor — familiar sentiments in a country with deep political polarization.
The court found Mr. Yoon guilty of leading an insurrection in 2024, when he declared martial law and sent special forces into the National Assembly to arrest his political opponents. The presiding judge said he had pushed South Korean society into an “extreme state of conflict” between warring political camps.
On Thursday, those tensions were on display outside the courthouse, where pro- and anti-Yoon groups blared their respective slogans — and calls for Mr. Yoon and his political nemesis, President Lee Jae Myung, to receive the death penalty — through loudspeakers.
In one camp, hundreds of Yoon supporters gathered in front of a makeshift stage with a screen playing a live broadcast of the trial. Some waved American flags, a symbol commonly used by South Korea’s far-right movement. One man stood atop a van wearing a jacket that said “MKGA,” short for Make Korea Great Again. Mr. Yoon has enthusiastically courted such crowds ever since his impeachment.
Several blocks away, a smaller cluster of anti-Yoon protesters chanted for the death penalty, the punishment that prosecutors had sought for the ex-president.
One demonstrator, Choi Jaejic, said he had spent nearly every weekend over the past year joining rallies calling for a conviction. “Martial law threw the country into chaos,” said Mr. Choi, a translator. “He took away precious time away from my children.”
“Even the death sentence wouldn’t be enough,” said Kim Mo-geun, a college student in his 20s.
Mr. Yoon himself showed little emotion in court. After his sentence was read aloud, a television camera showed him averting his gaze from the judge.
But his supporters and political adversaries were clearly not satisfied with the verdict.
Mr. Yoon’s lawyers called the sentence political theater, saying in a statement that the judges had ignored the truth and “knelt before the political force that wanted to purge its enemy.” They also vowed to “fight to the end.”
“It’s unbelievable,” Kim Sook-min, a Yoon supporter in her 60s, said outside the courthouse as she held a South Korean flag in support of the former president. “I am at a loss for words.”
On the other side of the political divide, Jung Chung-rae, the leader of the governing Democratic Party, expressed disappointment that the sentence had fallen short of the death penalty. He described the outcome as “a ruling that defied the South Korean public’s sense of justice.”
Jin Yu Young is a reporter and researcher for The Times, based in Seoul, covering South Korea and international breaking news.“
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Republicans, Braced for Losses, Push More Voting Restrictions in Congress - The New York Times
Republicans, Braced for Losses, Push More Voting Restrictions in Congress
"Legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote was only the beginning as the G.O.P. presses to sharply limit voting in line with President Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud.
The strict voter identification measure that Republicans have pushed through the House is just their opening salvo in a broader legislative effort aimed at keeping control of Congress this fall and helping to amplify the president’s false claims of mass voter fraud in the event that they lose.
The G.O.P.’s relentless focus on the bill and an even more restrictive measure making its way through the House — both of which face a steep uphill path to becoming law — is aimed chiefly at intensifying pressure within their own ranks to muscle through new voting restrictions and seek to reshape the electorate in their favor.
But it also allows Republicans to hammer President Trump’s falsehoods about widespread illegal voting particularly by undocumented immigrants, helping them build a case, however groundless, that any Democratic victories in November will be a result of cheating.
“As President Trump told me last week, it really will save America,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, recently told a right-leaning media outlet in Florida, of the push to enact the measure that passed the House. “If we don’t, we lose the midterms and we lose the country.”
Next up is a measure from Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration, whose “Make Elections Great Again Act” would go even further in imposing federal control over elections than the Save America Act, which squeaked through on a near-party-line vote last week. That bill would require proof of American citizenship to register to vote and allow the Department of Homeland Security to have access to voter rolls.
Republican proponents of Mr. Steil’s legislation have begun referring to it as the Save America Act, but on steroids.
Mr. Steil’s bill would ban universal voting by mail and prohibit the counting of ballots received after Election Day. It would ban ranked-choice voting for federal elections and would prohibit voters from giving sealed mail ballot packets to someone else for delivery, a practice currently allowed in 18 states.
It also would grant far more authority to the Department of Homeland Security to obtain information about voters from states. And it would reinforce the House-passed bill’s voter ID requirements, including establishing citizenship by requiring people to show a passport or a birth certificate to register and identification to vote.
“Elections should end on Election Day,” Mr. Steil said at a hearing last week, echoing an assertion Mr. Trump made repeatedly after his 2020 election loss.
At the hearing, Mr. Steil brought in three election deniers to make the case for the changes: Chuck Gray, the secretary of state of Wyoming, who claimed the 2020 presidential race was “illegitimate”; Ann Bollin, a state representative from Michigan who in 2020 signed a letter requesting an audit and investigation of election results in her state; and a senior lawyer with Judicial Watch, a conservative organization that has represented individuals challenging state election laws.
Democrats fear the bill could get fast-tracked to the floor, depending on what Mr. Trump tells House Republicans he wants them to do. And Speaker Mike Johnson has already stated that questioning the security of the upcoming elections is an issue he does not plan to let fade from voters’ minds.
“That is something that’s going to be a continuing theme here; it’s something we’ll continue to push,” Mr. Johnson told reporters earlier this month.
Mr. Johnson, who played a lead role in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, has raised questions in recent days about three House Republican candidates from California who held leads on Election Day in 2024. He said they saw their advantages “magically whittled away,” when more mail-in ballots came in and were counted.
“It looks on its face to be fraudulent,” Mr. Johnson said without offering any evidence, even though none of those Republicans leveled any accusations of fraud when they conceded their races.
Mr. Johnson did not mention that Republicans also won districts in 2024 in part because of ballots that came in after Election Day. Representative Gabe Evans, Republican of Colorado, for instance, won his seat in Colorado’s Eighth District in 2024 in a tight race that wasn’t called for days as votes continued to come in and be counted.
Other Republicans in tight races in swing districts, like Representative Young Kim of California, saw their leads grow substantially with votes tallied after Election Day.
Democrats argue the bills would disenfranchise millions of Americans by making it more difficult for some of their key constituencies — including women, legal immigrants, lower-income Americans and others who may lack the necessary documentation to meet the new requirements — to vote.
“The Make Elections Great Again Act is one strand of spaghetti, the Save America Act is another strand,” Representative Joseph D. Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration panel, said in an interview. “They’re going to throw the whole bowl at the wall.”
Mr. Morelle noted that the number of noncitizens who cast ballots in elections is so small — almost nonexistent — as to be statistically insignificant. He said the real problem was that there are 80 million U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote and did not do so in the 2024 presidential election.
“If you were concerned about our elections, you would be encouraging them to vote,” Mr. Morelle said. “The larger point is this: They are doing anything they can to disrupt the elections.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said he saw the congressional efforts as part of a larger pattern that has included the president’s recent talk of nationalizing elections and his regret about not seizing voting machines in swing states after his loss in 2020. He said those efforts also included intimidating poll workers and most recently, dispatching Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, to Fulton County, Ga., to elevate false claims of voter fraud.
“We need just to face it head on,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “There’s no trick solution here. We have to tell voters that the way to overcome it is to turn out massively and make majorities large enough that he has no credible argument.”
Still, Senate Republicans are under increasing pressure from the hard right to do whatever is necessary to break through a filibuster and ram through the Save America Act on a simple majority vote over Democratic opposition.
So far, only two of the usual group of Republican holdouts to Mr. Trump’s agenda — Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — have not signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, meaning it would have more than enough support to pass on an up-or-down vote.
The efforts can be viewed as a continuation of Mr. Trump’s election denialism from 2020 that led a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The fact that Republicans won the White House, as well as both chambers of Congress, in 2024 only delayed the issue of voter fraud claims.
And even as they turn their attention to November, Republicans in Congress still struggle with how to talk about past losses.
In a heated exchange during a Rules Committee hearing last week, Mr. Steil delivered careful and legalistic answers when pressed by Democrats about the results of the past two presidential elections.
“Do you agree that Joe Biden won Georgia” in 2020, Representative Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado, asked him.
Mr. Steil responded: “As reported, the state of Georgia cast its electoral ballots for Joe Biden.”
“What does that mean,” Mr. Neguse responded, and then asked him if former Vice President Kamala Harris won Minnesota in 2024.
“The Electoral College was counted in favor of Kamala Harris,” Mr. Steil replied, causing Mr. Neguse to lose his patience.
“Why can’t you just say, ‘Yes?’” he said, raising his voice. He added: “If I ask anyone on the panel whether or not a particular candidate won the popular vote in a particular state, I get the same gobbledygook answers.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times."