In this week Elijah v. UNITED STATES, our judicial correspondent deplores our long failure to prosecute war criminals. More: The death of Nolan Wells and the nightmare so many black parents fear.
U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Mar-a-Lago on December 29, 2025.(Joe RaedleaGetty Images) New Jersey made a mistake. Well, more to the point, the software used by the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles made a mistake. The state learned this week that a computer malfunction at the DMV led about 6,600 people to indicate they were not U.S. citizens registered to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. Approximately 400 of these erroneously registered individuals voted in a New Jersey election.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill apologized for the mistake that occurred before she took office. She released a statement expressing how seriously she takes the issue and assuring the public that the issue has been corrected and the registrations revoked.
You can imagine how this all played out under the Trump administration. Even before this revelation, the Republican National Committee was working to subpoena voter registration records in New Jersey as part of their endless fishing expedition for allegations of voter fraud. This request was categorically rejected in court. But we can expect the RNC to try again based on this DMV error.
And they will be joined by the Trump Justice Department. The DOJ has now requested the full names, addresses and election information of incorrectly registered non-citizens in New Jersey. There is no reason for the DOJ to have this data; Rather, the DOJ should investigate the software company that produced the error, without harassing people who responded honestly and were accidentally recorded anyway.
But something worse than harassment will likely happen to the nearly 400 noncitizens who voted. The DOJ will come down on them like a hammer and, most likely, attempt to arrest and deport them.
Since no one in power in the Democratic Party will have the courage to say this, I will stand on a hill and scream that 400 people are voting illegally it doesn’t matter. Around 6,600 people accidentally recorded it doesn’t matter.
New Jersey has 6,682,699 registered voters. The DMV error meant that 0.0988 percent of those voters should not have been registered. In the 2024 presidential election, 4,272,725 people voted in New Jersey. If 400 people voted illegally, that equates to 0.00936 percent of the total votes cast.
This error is negligible. It had no effect – and unlike Governor Sherrill, I don’t take it seriously. Worrying about this is like worrying about someone driving (gets out calculator) 55.005148 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone. This whole “question” is stupid.
The bully and the ugly
Current number
Trump’s army of election deniers won all the big prizes in Arizona’s Republican primaries this week. Andy Biggs won the GOP primary for governor. It’s the same Andy Biggs who, as a representative in the House, voted against his own state’s electoral vote count in 2020. Meanwhile, Alex Kolodin won the primary for secretary of state. Kolodin is a long-time election denier who helped bring the “Kraken” lawsuit after the 2020 election. Let’s hope Arizona voters actually want their votes counted. In May, a federal judge ruled that ICE does not have the authority to make immigration arrests in New York City immigration courts. ICE made at least six arrests inside the Manhattan courthouses since he was explicitly told that wasn’t possible. Workers who say they were fired from Meta based on metrics collected by AI were denied a temporary restraining order that would have prevented the company from firing them. The judge ruled that the workers suffered no “immediate harm” because they can still sue after being fired if their termination was legally wrong. I’m starting to wonder if all the federal judges were just some middle school kids who got in your face and yelled, “I’m not touching you. You can’t be mad because I’m not touching you.” Trump has rejected nearly 6,000 pardon requests from people who were not part of the crowd he sent to overthrow the government on January 6. Although “removing the presidential pardon power” isn’t at the top of my list of “constitutional amendments we need now,” it sure is. on the list. Technically, this won’t be considered another ICE killing when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission finally gets underway, but a Mexican was killed when he was hit by a truck while trying to cross a busy road to flee ICE. The man was a tourist, just here on vacation, with a valid travel visa. Some might ask, “Well, why did he run away?” The answer is that ICE is terrifying, routinely kidnaps people, and appears to be subject to no laws or regulations. Running from thugs empowered to violate your body and your rights is a rational game. ICE didn’t hit him with the truck, but that was the ultimate cause of his death. Popular “Swipe left below to see more authors”Swipe →
Inspired Takes
I hate knowing that Andrew Tate exists. But Jeet Heer explains in The Nation Why I must somehow be aware of him. Among other things, he has the ear of the Trump boys, notably Barron’s. I spent a lot of time thinking about emigrating from this fascist nation. But I still run into the same obstacle: Where else is significantly better? I am a black man and I am raising two black children. Where the hell am I supposed to go? In The NationEdna Bonhomme told me “not Germany.” In all honesty, I could have guessed that. Yet the article confirms that while it sucks to be black here, it sucks to be black anywhere. The best thing I can say about America is that it’s the devil I know. Journalist Radley Balko state the case for suing Stephen Miller. This absolutely needs to happen: Miller needs to go to prison to tell future Stephen Millers that they could go to prison too. But… I don’t think that will ever happen. The worst argument of the week
One of the reasons I have little hope that Miller or any of Trump’s odious acolytes will ever be held accountable for their fascist actions is that law professor John Yoo is still out there, free and spreading evil. This is the man who wrote the torture memos during the George W. Bush administration. He is literally the legal architect of war crimes. And yet he is still a “respected” law professor, at Berkeley no less, who appears regularly on television and is allowed to live a free life, despite being the man who gave Dick Cheney legal cover for the fake-drowning phenomenon. Justice never comes for these people.
Yoo is back in the news because he has the ear of the current administration, and he’s advocating for legislation against the person who scares Republicans the most: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United Nations General Assembly this fall, Mamdani said he would “consider” what his options were for arresting the man. Netanyahu is on the run from the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for his arrest. Mamdani said he would ask his lawyers if there was anything he could do about it.
He could have asked me (although I’d like to think I walked away from the city government salary). The answer is “no”. Netanyahu is protected by diplomatic immunity when he visits the United Nations. Mamdani can’t even give him a parking ticket. And this[[deep existential sigh]is as it should be. Leaders from around the world must be able to come freely to the UN for the UN to work, and these leaders include strongmen, dictators, and people that some countries perceive as “bad.” Diplomatic immunity must exist and must be respected. New Yorkers are not barbaric thugs like the Spartans.
There is also a law, the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, that prevents Mamdani from doing anything. This is a Bush-era law that prevents U.S. officials from working with the International Criminal Court in any capacity. The Bush regime was particularly interested in not being held accountable for war crimes.
This is the law that Yoo invoked on Fox News in declaring that Mamdani should be investigated by the Justice Department. But, as Joe Patrice explained to Above the lawYoo overplayed his hand. You can’t investigate a man because he spoke to a lawyer. You can’t accuse someone of breaking the law if they didn’t break it. Mamdani called, interviewed some experts; they finally told him that Netanyahu was untouchable and, like Mamdani recognized-that’s it. Yoo’s attempt to threaten Mamdani is just another case of MAGA trying to find a reason to go after the popular left-wing mayor.
The American Military Protection Act It’s actually a crappy law. This is something Obama or Biden should have repealed at the first opportunity. It’s sometimes called the “Hague Invasion Act” because it absurdly asserts that the United States can send military forces to The Hague to stage a prison break if one of our own is held there for, let’s not forget, war crimes Or crimes against humanity. Any American president should be willing to abide by the rules of the International Criminal Court, and the fact that none of them do so – neither Republican nor Democratic presidents – is a stain on our country and one of the (many) reasons we are seen as global thugs.
Regardless, neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor John Yoo should be able to travel to a country that respects international law. Fortunately for them both, our country protects war criminals.
What I wrote
I haven’t put anything on the board this week, but to be honest with me, it’s the middle of summer and my kids are done with camp. Also, Jay Willis on Balls and strikes I wrote down everything I was going to say about the Supreme Court decision drop in survey figures aged.
In news unrelated to the current chaos
I didn’t write about Nolan Wells situation. Wells was an 18-year-old college football player who disappeared July 4 weekend after a boat trip with friends to Horn Island, off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Wells and a group of friends went out, but Wells never returned. His body was found six days later. Mississippi authorities have not released the autopsy, although the family ordered a private autopsy that I came back inconclusive as to the cause of death.
I have not written about this because, although Wells’ family has retained a high-profile attorney, Benjamin Crump, I have nothing to say about the legal, or potentially criminal, circumstances surrounding his death. We don’t know how he died, we don’t know why, and although Mississippi officials seem incredibly unconcerned about his death, there is no cause of action against the state yet that I’m aware of.
I can only speak about Wells as a parent, and Wells’ situation brings out an acute fear that I think is only shared, in its entirety, by other black parents. Wells happens to be black, but most of the friends he made the trip with are white. I can tell you that sending your black child to any type of party with predominantly white friends is a special kind of terror.
You’re not afraid that your white friends will kill or lynch your child, not exactly anyway. You are more worried than that, if others decide it’s time for a lynchingwhite friends won’t be of any help. You’re not really worried about white friends TO DO something; you are afraid that they I won’t do anything when something needs to be done. You worry that, in an all-white crowd, your child will be alone, even if he or she thinks he or she is with a group of friends.
Wells’ White Friends all claim that they have no idea what happened to him. I believe them. I have no reason not to believe them. But that’s kind of the problem: a whole group of friends, and no one knows what happened to the black guy. A whole group of friends, and no one paid attention to the black man – on an island in the Mississippi, among other places.
And don’t even get me started on how this situation would play out if the races were reversed. If a group of black kids with a white friend went to an island and the white guy didn’t come home, the black kids would be under the prison until someone “remembers” something.
In college, I had a few white friends I could trust. On campus, it was rubbish, but if we ever went to Boston, they wouldn’t leave me. They knew that they I couldn’t leave me. They couldn’t let me be the only black guy trying to get home drunk on the train from Southie. They must have been there to hail the taxi that I wouldn’t be able to take otherwise.
I survived college. And I’m still friends with them to this day. When I watch my kids interact with their white friends in and around school…that’s literally the only quality I look for.
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Elie Mystal Elie Mystal is The Nationjustice correspondent and columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: New York Times bestseller Let me respond: A Guide to the Constitution for Black Men And Bad Laws: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining Americaboth published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter Elijah v. UNITED STATES here.
