Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has filed a motion requesting that U.S. District Judge Eleanor L. Ross, an Obama appointee, recuse herself from the high-stakes federal lawsuit United States v. Raffensperger.

Judge Ross has faced intense criticism after the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Council privately reprimanded her for judicial misconduct in violation of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. The Judicial Council’s report detailed two distinct elements of misconduct investigated together in a single disciplinary case.

She attended a partisan victory party celebrating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s Democratic primary win in May 2024 — walking through a lobby adorned with campaign signs, drinking martinis at what was effectively a victory celebration, and later showing photos from the event to her staff the next day.

This was not a neutral gathering; it was a celebration for the same prosecutor whose high-profile RICO case against President Trump and 18 co-defendants collapsed amid scandals involving her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Willis’s office was ultimately disqualified by Georgia courts, and the charges were dismissed.

Separately, Judge Ross engaged in a two-year extramarital affair with a high-ranking Atlanta Police Department officer (Deputy Chief Kelley Collier), including sexual encounters in her courthouse chambers during business hours that were audible to law clerks and staff. She also initially made false statements to investigators before admitting the conduct, according to Bloomberg Law.

These violations, which undermine the impartiality, integrity, and dignity required by a federal judge’s oath of office, resulted in a private reprimand, the mildest formal sanction short of removal. The judge remains on the bench.

Federal judges are expected to remain strictly non-partisan and to avoid any appearance of political favoritism. “A judge who attended a party celebrating the election of a Democrat best known for prosecuting a Republican president for alleged election interference cannot then preside over a case concerning that president’s efforts to ensure election integrity,” Dhillon argued in the filing.

The lawsuit seeks to compel Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to produce Georgia’s full, unredacted voter registration database to the Department of Justice.

It aims to enforce states’ obligations to maintain accurate voter rolls under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and related federal laws, essential protections designed to safeguard election accuracy and address vulnerabilities exposed in 2020.

Ross’s attendance at the Willis victory party, given her prior professional relationship with Willis in the Fulton County DA’s office, creates an appearance of impropriety.

This appearance of bias violates 28 U.S.C. § 455, which requires judges to disqualify themselves when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

Judge Ross’s documented misconduct, combined with her connection to Willis, whose failed prosecution involved romantic conflicts with the special prosecutor she hired, lavish trips funded by him, and serious ethical lapses, raises serious concerns of partisan influence.

For any judge linked to celebrating Willis’s primary victory to now rule on Trump administration efforts to ensure election integrity creates an untenable conflict.

Georgia remains a central focal point of the 2020 election controversies. Allowing a judge with these documented violations to block or delay critical voter integrity efforts would further erode public trust in the courts and the electoral process.

Complete, unredacted voter registration records are essential for identifying non-citizen voting, removing outdated or inaccurate registrations, and addressing other vulnerabilities that continue to undermine citizen confidence in election integrity.

This motion comes as the Trump administration aggressively advances voter integrity initiatives nationwide, pushing back against years of resistance to fundamental safeguards such as accurate voter roll maintenance. With the June 3 hearing fast approaching, recusal is not optional. When the appearance of bias is this clear, disqualification is essential to upholding judicial neutrality and safeguarding the integrity of our elections.

The Smithsonian may have falsely claimed that President Richard Nixon was impeached in its new exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

The gallery’s “America’s Presidents” exhibit reopened to the public on May 15 and includes a portrait of the 37th president by acclaimed American artist Norman Rockwell. Jim Byron, president and CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation, wrote a letter to the gallery’s acting director Elliot Gruber alleging that the biography accompanying the portrait falsely states that Nixon was impeached, according to a copy of the letter Byron posted to X Wednesday.

According to Byron’s letter, the biography says “investigations into a break in at the Watergate complex and the subsequent cover up resulted in Nixon’s impeachment on the charges of obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.” The label correctly adds that the California Republican “became the first President to resign.”

“In fact, President Nixon was never impeached,” Byron wrote in the letter. “He resigned on August 9, 1974 before the House of Representatives had voted on any article(s) of impeachment.”

While the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee in July 1974 adopted three articles of impeachment against Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned less than two weeks later — before the House could vote on the articles,

I trust that the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery @smithsoniannpg will take immediate steps to correct this mistake, lest its many visitors are misled about the 37th President. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/kyBOIYS6Y7

— Jim Byron (@jimbyron_) May 27, 2026

Byron alleged that the exhibit’s “earlier, replaced, label did not include this error.”

“I trust you will take immediate steps to correct this mistake, lest the many visitors to the handsome new gallery are misled about the 37th President,” the Richard Nixon Foundation’s CEO added.

Byron led the foundation on and off from November 2021 and had previously served as the senior advisor to the Archivist of the United States during the second Trump administration.

The Richard Nixon Foundation states on its website that it is “Carrying the legacy and vision of President Richard Nixon into the 21st century.”

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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By The Western Journal – https://www.westernjournal.com/smithsonian-accused-rewriting-nixon-history-false-impeachment-claim/

As Colombians prepare to cast their votes on Sunday, one figure towers over the campaign trail like a force of nature: Abelardo de la Espriella, the combative lawyer and businessman known throughout his nation as “El Tigre.” Surging in the final polls to within striking distance of the leftist frontrunner, the outsider candidate is drawing massive crowds that roar his slogan “¡Firme por la patria!” while men in tiger costumes chant and fireworks explode behind bulletproof glass. He is the candidate the left and the entrenched conservatives fear most because he refuses to play by the rules of the political establishment. A self-funded movement leader who skipped the old party primaries, de la Espriella offers something rarer in Colombian politics: an unapologetic repudiation of the failed status quo.

This election is far larger than Colombia alone. It is a hemispheric test of whether Latin America will continue its drift toward ideological experiments that weaken sovereignty and empower criminal empires, or finally reject them by electing a leader with the force of personality to stop them dead in their tracks. Voters are faced with three options: institutionalization of Gustavo Petro’s left-wing project in Iván Cepeda, the restoration of a stale political class with Paloma Valencia, or the genuine anti-establishment renaissance that de la Espriella represents. It is a moment of truth for the Colombian people. Will they accept genuine transformation or instead choose the same old failures wearing fresh slogans and slicker advertising.

The conditions for this populist explosion were created by Petro himself. Colombia’s first leftist president arrived promising “Total Peace,” treating armed groups as political actors with legitimate grievances rather than mortal enemies of the State. In practice, the policy granted narco-terrorist networks precious time, legitimacy, and breathing room to expand. Groups such as the ELN, FARC dissidents (FARC-EP and Segunda Marquetalia), Clan del Golfo, Tren de Aragua, and the transnational empires of the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG—all designated by the United States as terrorist organizations—exploited the opening. As a direct result of Petro’s malfeasance, ordinary Colombians lived with extortion, displacement, and the grinding erosion of safety on a daily basis. Petro may not have invented these criminal ecosystems, but his doctrine of craven appeasement functionally empowered them.

The damage has not stayed within Colombia’s borders. A fragile Colombia strengthens the cartels, accelerates migration northward, and hands strategic advantages to Venezuela and the Cuban regime. It weakens a historic U.S. security partner at the very moment when counter-narcotics cooperation, border security, and regional stability matter most. Petro’s open hostility toward Washington has only hastened the drift. The next president will determine whether Colombia remains a frontline bulwark or remains as a vector of instability.

Into this vacuum steps Iván Cepeda, Petro’s chosen successor from the Historic Pact. A senator, human rights activist, and son of a Communist Party leader, Cepeda is more disciplined and ideologically consistent than his mentor. He pledges to deepen social reforms, pursue further negotiations with armed groups, advance progressive taxation, and possibly rewrite the constitution through a constituent assembly. To those who value order, sovereignty, and strong alliances, Cepeda represents something more dangerous than mere continuity. He is the full institutionalization of Petroism. Through the coddling of narcotraffickers, the full-scale expansion of cultural progressivism, hostility to markets, and further alienation from Washington, Cepeda would serve the interests of Maduro, Havana, and the narco-left while undermining U.S. objectives on drugs, migration, and hemispheric security.

On the center-right stands Senator Paloma Valencia of the Democratic Center, positioned as the respectable, establishment-approved conservative option. A philosopher, lawyer, and political heir with deep ties to the legacy of controversial former President Álvaro Uribe, Valencia promises to end Total Peace, strengthen security forces, resume coca fumigation, and revive investment in hydrocarbons. Yet Valencia is the very embodiment of the system many Colombians now reject: conventional, focus-grouped, donor-influenced, and bound by her ties to the political elite. She offers competent stewardship of decline within the bounds the globalist elite find acceptable. Like a Colombian Nikki Haley, she can rally traditional conservative votes and obtain high-level endorsements, but Valencia lacks the dynamism to spark the broader popular revolt against an exhausted, self-protective political class widely viewed as corrupt and incapable of delivering structural change.

That is precisely why de la Espriella has become the lightning rod. Operating through his Defenders of the Homeland movement, the 47-year-old has crafted an insurgent crusade instead of a conventional candidacy. His platform puts security first as the indispensable foundation for everything else: ten new mega-prisons modeled that would outdo Salvadoran President Nayik Bukele, military offensives against groups that refuse to submit, aerial fumigation of coca crops, drastic cuts to government bureaucracy, tax reductions, and a complete revival of the hydrocarbons sector. Criminals who reject peace will face decisive action under the law—no more treating narco-terrorist armies as negotiating partners. Just days ago, he met virtually with Brazil’s Bolsonaro brothers to begin forging a regional conservative alliance centered on ironclad security, smaller government, and economic freedom.

De la Espriella’s leadership ability lies in the characteristics she shares with the most influential leaders throughout the Americas. He wields Trump’s nationalist directness, contempt for elite gatekeeping and fearless naming of enemies—whether it is leftist ideologues, criminal networks, or the incestuous political class. He channels Bukele’s uncompromising insistence that public order is the precondition for liberty: the simple freedom to leave home, run a business, send children to school, and return home with your family safe and sound at the end of the day. And he carries Milei’s ferocious attack on socialist bureaucracy and market-hostile policies that punish productive citizens. For de la Espriella, security, sovereignty, and economic stagnation are not separate issues but one interconnected crisis manufactured by decades of elite failure.

His coalition reflects that understanding. It draws conservatives, working-class voters, entrepreneurs, national-security realists, anti-corruption voices, and independents who are exhausted by both Petro’s experiments and the old right’s timidity. These Colombians feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods, cheated by a self-serving system, and abandoned by conventional conservatism. They are not looking for the politics of respectability. They do not yearn for some kind of bipartisan facade. They are looking for a leader who owes no favors to a political class that has besieged their country. Colombia’s populist moment has arrived.

Abelardo de la Espriella is the candidate who captures the fury, the fear, and the hope of millions of Colombians who want safety restored, national sovereignty reclaimed, and prosperity to finally be unleashed. The left fears him because he rejects their ideologies and pays them no lip service otherwise. The right fears him because he rejects their good ol’ boys club. The comparison to Donald Trump is obvious. If Colombians choose la Espriella’s bold path toward national renaissance, they may not only rescue their own country but help chart a stronger, freer path for the entire hemisphere—one grounded in unity, strength, nationalism and an unyielding will to achieve absolute victory for the people.