Indian national accused of claiming US citizenship to cast vote

By Shubhangi Chowdhury

September 11, 2026

Credit: https://www.justice.gov/


A federal grand jury in Minnesota has indicted an Indian national for allegedly making a false claim of U.S. citizenship in order to vote in the 2024 general election.

Mukeshkumar Somabhai Chaudhari was charged in a two-count indictment returned in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. According to the Justice Department, the charges stem from his alleged participation in the Nov. 5, 2024, general election.

Prosecutors allege that Chaudhari signed the voter signature certificate required under Minnesota law on Election Day. The certificate required voters to swear or affirm that they were U.S. citizens.
The indictment alleges that Chaudhari was not a U.S. citizen at the time and knowingly made the false statement about his citizenship in order to cast a ballot.

READ: No more 60 days? DHS targets H-1B, L-1 and other foreign workers (September 10, 2026)

“The right to vote is a sacred privilege of American citizenship, and every lawful voter deserves an election system in which that right is protected,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“The Department will hold accountable those who knowingly make false claims of citizenship in order to vote. The integrity of our elections depends on ensuring that only eligible citizens cast ballots and that every lawful vote is counted.”

Chaudhari faces one count of false information in voting under 52 U.S.C. § 21144(b), incorporating 18 U.S.C. § 1015(f), and one count of making a false claim of citizenship to register to vote or vote under 18 U.S.C. § 1015(f).

READ: DHS changes green card rules for children born to foreign government employees (September 5, 2026)

If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison on each count. Any sentence would be determined by a federal district court judge after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Homeland Security Investigations is investigating the case with assistance from the Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office.

Trial Attorneys Flavio Abreu and William Rubens of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Criminal Section are prosecuting the case.

The Justice Department emphasized that an indictment is only an allegation. Chaudhari is presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in court.

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Last-minute doomsday scenarios for the 2026 election

People walk past a polling place at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC, during a primary election on June 16. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Analysis by

Zachary B. Wolf

Imaginations run wild at what President Donald Trump and his allies might yet do to interfere in the coming midterm election. He’s already done quite a bit.

This is the man who alleged widespread voter fraud even in the two elections he won and who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he still won’t admit he lost. There’s no evidence of any such fraud.

Asked in recent months about some more extreme possible actions he could take in November or after, Trump has stayed coy while leaving ample room to stoke conspiracy theories, even as his top aides have continued to raise unsubstantiated concerns about voting machines and noncitizens voting.

Some of these extreme possible measures — which have been the subject of either speculation or direct lobbying by Trump allies — include seizing ballot boxes, declaring a national election emergency, or deploying troops or ICE agents to polling places. When Trump in July gave an address to the nation on election integrity, he did not promise to do any of these things. But speculation has persisted, particularly on the political left as it tries to get out the vote in November.
For Trump, teasing an election surprise may be the point

“Trump is throwing stuff out there. People are biting on it, and it makes the country as a whole more nervous, and is a self-perpetuating cycle,” said Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer.

But he also said the country — and election workers — needs to be ready for the unexpected.

“Because the rhetoric is there and (Trump) has shown a singular ability for asymmetrical warfare starting on January 6. If you’re an election official, you have to be preparing,” he said. But that preparation must come, Ginsberg said, with the knowledge that “the creation of a climate of fear is maybe a goal in and of itself.”

Could Trump declare a national emergency?

When a reporter asked in February, Trump seemed surprised and said he didn’t know anything about a push by election deniers for him to declare a national election emergency and seize broad and unprecedented control over how states run elections.

But this month, when the idea was explained to him by conservative commentator Wayne Root, Trump didn’t reject it, but also didn’t endorse it.

“Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK? I’ll leave it at that,” Trump said.

North Pacific Union Votes to Allow Women’s Ordination

Delegates to the North Pacific Union Conference’s 30th Constituency Session voted Sunday, August 23, to recognize local conferences’ right to recommend candidates for ordination, opening the way for conferences to submit women pastors for ordination consideration by the union.

The motion, brought to the session following a request from the Oregon Conference, states that the North Pacific Union “recognizes the right and responsibility of each local conference to prepare and recommend names for ordination” and will consider candidates submitted by local conference executive committees. In the vote, 62.6% supported the motion and 37.4% opposed it, with 310 votes cast, according to results displayed during the livestream. Before the main vote, delegates rejected an attempt to require a two-thirds majority for passage: 59.5% supported raising the threshold, short of the two-thirds required, while 40.5% voted no.

The action is significant in the denomination’s continuing debate over women’s ordination. The General Conference Session last voted on the broader issue in 2015, when delegates rejected allowing divisions to decide independently whether to ordain women. Earlier this year, the NPUC Executive Committee asked the General Conference to place women’s ordination back on the agenda for the 2030 GC Session. Sunday’s constituency action goes further locally by establishing that the union will consider ordination candidates recommended by its conferences. The session is being held at Walla Walla University Church in College Place, Washington, with delegates representing the union’s six conferences.

Image: Delegates vote on an ordination motion during the 2026 North Pacific Union Conference constituency session. The motion passed with 62.6 percent support. Image: NPUC constituency session livestream.

North Pacific Union ConferenceStanton

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The Vindicator explains: How 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey

By Krystal Knapp July 26, 2026

About 400 later cast ballots. Here is what we know about the voter-registration failure, what the state and its contractor disagree about, and the questions that still need to be answered.

Governor Mikie Sherrill, Lt. Governor Dale Caldwell and MVC Acting Chair & Chief Administrator Rosalie Johnson hold a press conference announcing that New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to voter registration of roughly 6,600 people, who indicated that they were not U.S. citizens, between June 2023 and June 2024, while in the media room of the statehouse in Trenton, N.J. on Tuesday, July 21, 2026. Photo: Tim Larsen, Office of the Governor.


New Jersey officials have acknowledged a breakdown in the state’s voter-registration system: About 6,600 people who identified themselves as noncitizens while obtaining driver’s licenses or identification cards were nevertheless registered to vote.

Roughly 400 of them later cast ballots, according to a preliminary state review.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill has blamed a software error involving IDEMIA, a longtime Motor Vehicle Commission contractor. But the company says its system accurately recorded the information it received and that state officials had access to records showing the applicants were not citizens.

The failure occurred between June 2023 and June 2024, during former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration. Although the process was corrected in June 2024, the public was not told about it until Sherrill disclosed it on July 21, 2026.

That leaves several major questions unresolved: Was this primarily a software failure, a poorly designed state process, a failure by election officials to review the information they received, or some combination of all three? Who knew about the problem, and when? And why weren’t the approximately 6,600 registrations reviewed and removed after the system was fixed?

Here is what we know and what we don’t know yet.

First, who is allowed to vote in New Jersey?

To register to vote in New Jersey, a person must be a U.S. citizen, a resident of the county where they are registering for at least 30 days before the election, and at least 17 years old, although they cannot vote until they turn 18.

Noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal and New Jersey elections. That includes people who are in the country legally, such as permanent residents with green cards, as well as people who are undocumented.

Noncitizens can legally obtain New Jersey driver’s licenses. Having a driver’s license does not make someone eligible to vote.

What happened?

Between June 2023 and June 2024, approximately 6,600 people were registered to vote through the Motor Vehicle Commission even though they indicated that they were not U.S. citizens.

The registrations occurred when people applied for or renewed driver’s licenses or state identification cards.

The applicants answered “no” when asked whether they were U.S. citizens, according to both the state and IDEMIA. But the system still asked whether they wanted to register to vote. IDEMIA says they answered “yes,” and their information was then transmitted for voter registration.

The state says the problem was corrected in June 2024. But officials apparently did not then identify and remove everyone who had already been improperly registered, and the public was not told about the failure until Sherrill disclosed it more than two years later.

Did the 6,600 people intentionally register?

That is disputed or, at a minimum, more complicated than the state initially disclosed.

Noncitizens CAUGHT: 6,600 registered to vote in New Jersey after error

 Noncitizens CAUGHT: 6,600 registered to vote in New Jersey after error

The National Desk

Jul 21, 2026

An estimated 6,600 individuals who indicated they were noncitizens while obtaining identification documents were improperly registered to vote in New Jersey, Gov. Mikie Sherrill said on Tuesday.

https://thenationaldesk.com/news/amer...

Judge blocks use of federal database to check citizenship, saying it could wrongly purge voters

The decision is a major legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House during an executive order signing about quantum computing, Monday, June 22, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

By Associated Press

PUBLISHED: June 22, 2026 at 1:45 PM PDT | UPDATED: June 22, 2026 at 2:02 PM PDT


By ALI SWENSON and FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s election integrity strategy is unlawful and can no longer be used.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Southern Baptists vote to ban women pastors

Southern Baptists vote to ban women pastors

ABC News

 Jun 10, 2026

ABC News’ Perry Russom speaks with the executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry Rev. Dr. Meredith Stone about the denomination’s vote to ban women from serving as lead pastors.

Regional Conference Weighs in on Voter ID and Redistricting

May 26, 2026 NewsHound

On their Facebook page, the South Central (regional) conference posted a statement yesterday about voting rights. Here’s the statement:

Some Online Comments:

• “For all those saying this is inappropriate? Remember that this church was founded on the abolition movement, religious liberty (for all), and supporting public policies that improve the social fabric (as misguided as temperance was). The SDA movement was progressive and political”
• “As a SDA, and a person of color. I would like say this to this woke conference that no one is denying anyone to vote, especially me since I've been voting here in Georgia for many years. BTW...Showing your id to vote, is not racist. Perhaps the racists is the South Central Conference, please stop speaking for us, thank you.”
• “No one is being denied the right to vote. Redistricting needs to be done in some cases to prevent the gerrymandering that has gone on for years. The church needs to stay out of this.”
• “So what exactly is this letter saying? As far as I know, if you are a US citizen you have the right to vote. If you have to show identification to prove you are a citizen, I don't see the problem. Why would redistricting cause any issue? You still have that right. These are genuine questions, not arguments. Im not looking for opinion, I'd like facts.”
• “This is pure politics dressed in holiness robes. Gerrymandering voter districts by race is illegal! That it has been done, and a slight bit of it is now being UNdone, is not a civil rights issue to begin protesting.”
• “I wonder where the similar outrage post was when Virginia, California, New York, Massachusetts, etc. were all making similar redirecting changes. Strange how SDAs had no concern with politics then?”
• “Thank you for this statement! HOWEVER!! This is NOT the stance of “the church“ by and large ( that a party or candidate is not endorsed). We need to address that. We are here because of “the church’s“ participation in what got us here in the first place.”
• “Not like some SDA members care what is voted for. We voted on “no” women pastors but here we are.”

Russia and China veto UN resolution aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz

Senate Votes to Fund Most of D.H.S. in Bid to End Partial Shutdown

The bill excludes funding for ICE and the Border Patrol but restores it for federal airport security workers. The House could consider the package on Friday.

The U.S. Capitol in Washington on Thursday.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times

By John Yoon and Michael Gold
March 27, 2026Updated 6:40 a.m. ET


The Senate voted early Friday to fund the Department of Homeland Security except for its immigration enforcement and deportation operations, raising the prospect of an end to a weekslong partial shutdown that has strained federal workers and caused long waits at airports.

The measure does not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, in effect reflecting a proposal that Democrats had offered for weeks as they refused to fund federal immigration enforcement operations without adding new restrictions on agents.

“Senate Democrats were clear: no blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said after the measure passed.

The bill must still be considered by the House, which could vote on it as soon as Friday. It was unclear whether the measure would pass that chamber, where Speaker Mike Johnson holds a narrow Republican majority. A number of hard-right Republicans have criticized the Senate’s approach and oppose a funding bill that does not include money for immigration enforcement.

Should the House approve the measure and President Trump sign it, the deal would end a negotiating standoff that caused the longest partial government shutdown on record.

The Senate’s agreement, which it passed in a voice vote at around 2:20 a.m., came hours after Mr. Trump said that he would direct the homeland security secretary to pay Transportation Security Administration agents, who have worked without pay since funding for the department lapsed on Feb. 14.

Boston City Council to weigh non-citizen voting

A new home-rule petition would allow non-citizens with "legal status" to vote in municipal elections in Boston.

Councilor Julia Mejia. 

Pat Greenhouse / The Boston Globe, File

By Ross Cristantiello

March 19, 2026 | 11:06 AM

A number of Boston City Council members are showing support for a measure that would allow immigrants with “legal status” to vote in municipal elections.

Councilor Julia Mejia introduced a home-rule petition Wednesday, framing it as an extension of the progressive legacy laid out by former councilor Kendra Lara and others. Lara was the driving force behind a similar effort in 2023.

That year, the City Council approved a home-rule petition with very similar language in an 8-4 vote. It moved on to Beacon Hill and eventually stalled there. Mejia described the State House as a place “where everything goes to die” when speaking about the new home-rule petition Wednesday.

But now, in the context of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign and an explosion in anti-immigrant rhetoric, Mejia said that the time has come to try again.

“We’re back again, because the urgency of this issue has only grown. At a time when immigrant communities are facing increasing attacks, harmful rhetoric, and fear, we have a responsibility at the local level to respond,” she said.

Councilors Liz Breadon, Miniard Culpepper, Ruthzee Louijeune, Enrique Pepén, Henry Santana, Ben Weber, and Brian Worrell all signed on to Mejia’s petition, indicating their support. It was referred to the Committee on Government Operations and will be the subject of a future hearing.

Non-citizen immigrants with “legal status” make up more than 28% of Boston’s population, according to Mejia’s petition. They pay an average of $2.3 billion a year in taxes.

Illegal immigrants from Africa, India and China are voting in US elections — here’s how they’re doing it

By Chadwick Moore

Published March 16, 2026, 2:33 p.m. ET


A Mauritanian illegal immigrant marked for deportation since 2002 has continued to live in the US and is a registered Democrat who voted in every election since 2008, authorities claim.

Mahady Sacko, 50, who goes by the nickname “Sacko Scorpion,” was busted last week in Philadelphia for allegedly falsely claiming citizenship to cast a 2024 ballot.

He was picked up in a joint operation between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the FBI who charge he “falsely represented that he was a US citizen in order to vote and register to vote” in the last preidential election, according to a press release.

Sacko denied the charges when called by The Post, claiming: “Everything is a lie! They are lying about me!” before hanging up. He has yet to enter a plea in his case.

Mahady Sacko of Mauritania allegedly voted as a registered Democrat in every election since 2008—until feds busted him last week in Philadelphia for falsely claiming citizenship to cast a 2024 ballot.

DOJ

DOJ

Images of Sacko’s paper voter registration where he registered with the Democrat Party, according to law enforcement and public records.

DOJ

As the issue of election security ramps up in Congress with the SAVE act, Sacko’s arrest was one of nearly a dozen uncovered by The Post of non-citizens allegedly voting in US elections, sometimes for decades, with many remaining listed as active voters on state rolls, even after their convictions.

“The reality is aliens are voting in American elections,” J. Christian Adams, president of Public Interest Legal Foundation, who has spent decades working on election integrity told The Post, noting no one is quite sure how widespread the problem is.

House GOP pushes strict proof-of-citizenship requirement for voters ahead of midterm elections

Wednesday, February 11, 2026 7:16PM



Watch ABC News live news stream and get 24/7 latest, breaking news coverage, and live video.

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans rushed to approve legislation on Wednesday that would impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements ahead of the midterm elections, a long shot Trump administration priority that faces sharp blowback in the Senate.

The bill, called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, would require Americans to prove they are citizens when they register to vote, mostly through a valid U.S. passport or birth certificate. It would also require a valid photo identification before voters can cast ballots, which some states already demand. It was approved on a mostly party-line vote, 218-213.

Republicans said the legislation is needed to prevent voter fraud, but Democrats warn it will disenfranchise millions of Americans by making it harder to vote. Federal law already requires that voters in national elections be U.S. citizens, but there's no requirement to provide documentary proof. Experts said voter fraud is extremely rare, and very few noncitizens ever slip through the cracks. Fewer than one in 10 Americans don't have paperwork proving they are citizens.

"Some of my colleagues will call this voter suppression or Jim Crow 2.0," said Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., presenting the package at a committee hearing.

But he said "those allegations are false," and he argued the bill is needed to enforce existing laws, particularly those that bar immigrants who are not citizens from voting. "The current law is not strong enough," he said.

The left’s path to permanent power

Minnesota shows the progressive formula in action and what happens when it is challenged

Politics

by Joe Rigney

Post Date:

February 3, 2026

Activists hand out flyers to motorists at a blockade set up to deter ICE vehicles in Minneapolis on Sunday.Associated Press / Photo by Alex Brandon

What is going on in Minnesota? Why has the state whose unofficial slogan is “Minnesota Nice” erupted (again) into a frenzy of protests, demonstrations, and violent clashes with law enforcement? In the midst of the chaos, it’s important for Christians to keep their eye on the ball.

Begin with the left’s unconstrained vision of society. As Thomas Sowell famously argued, the left is utopian; they believe that human beings are perfectible through the idealized use of power by anointed elites, whose good intentions more than compensate for any destruction that their policies actually cause. From progressivism to socialism to communism, the left is united by this “vision of the anointed,” and they are willing to unleash revolutionary zeal in order to accomplish it. The chaos of 2020—from COVID tyranny to the George Floyd riots—was rooted in this revolutionary vision of utopian justice.

This vision is fundamentally godless and inhuman (even when baptized by the platitudes of progressive Christians). From abortion-on-demand to the celebration of sexual deviancy, from soft-on-crime policies to wealth redistribution, the left is at war with Nature and Nature’s God, treating His moral boundaries as shackles to their unbridled passions. And thankfully, most Americans recoil from it when they actually encounter it, as evidenced by the mass exodus from blue states in recent years.

In the face of resistance to progressive governance, the left has settled on a three-pronged path to permanent political power.

Timeline on the partial government shutdown; Speaker Johnson looks to pa...

New Senate deal could keep government open, delay DHS funding decision

Lone Democrat's effort to impeach Trump fails miserably — because of his own party

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

politics


Rebeka Zeljko

December 11, 2025

'We can't just impeach someone with no process.'

Dozens of House Democrats turned their back on their colleague who led the latest impeachment effort against President Donald Trump.

Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green's effort to force a vote to impeach Trump failed miserably on Thursday in a 237-140 vote. Forty-seven Democrats, including all of the Democratic leadership, voted present, while 23 Democrats joined Republicans to table to motion altogether.

'None of that serious work has been done.'

Although Democrats are typically enthusiastic when given the opportunity to kneecap the administration, both the leadership and the rank-and-file blocked the vote.

"We can't just impeach someone with no process, without any investigation," Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California said following the vote.

Ilhan and Zohran were voted for by a majority not born in America

 

Chris Salcedo: 'The left thinks illegals are better than Americans'

'No Kings' protesters in NYC explain why they are voting for Zorhan Mamdani...