Donald Trump is going after Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, weeks after she published a preelection poll that found Kamala Harris had “leapfrogged” the former president 47 to 44 percent in Iowa.

“A totally Fake poll that caused great distrust and uncertainty at a very critical time. She knew exactly what she was doing,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Sunday.

“Thank you to the GREAT PEOPLE OF IOWA for giving me such a record breaking vote, despite possible ELECTION FRAUD by Ann Selzer and the now discredited ‘newspaper’ for which she works. An investigation is fully called for!”

Selzer’s poll had anticipated that Harris would lead Trump by three points in the state. In reality, he won Iowa by 13 points, making for a 16-point error. Until now, Selzer & Co. had been considered the gold standard of polling in the country.

Some have speculated that the Selzer poll’s failure to align with the actual results was because the poll had too many Democrats and college-educated voters. While Selzer’s philosophy of not correcting for these factors has worked in previous election years, this time it accounted for major differences from the outcome of the presidential election in the key swing state.

Trump shared a link to an op-ed Selzer wrote Sunday in The Des Moines Register, which had published her Iowa poll, announcing that she would be moving on from polling altogether.

“Over a year ago I advised the Register I would not renew when my 2024 contract expired with the latest election poll as I transition to other ventures and opportunities,” Seltzer wrote. “Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course.”

After Iowa was called for Trump, his campaign gloated about the win—and called out the pollster by name. “Starting on Day 1 President Trump and Vice President JD Vance will help to ease costs, secure the border, and protect Social Security for retirees like Ann Selzer,” the campaign said in a statement.

While Selzer’s poll wasn’t an accurate predictor of the outcome in that state, it’s far from illegal for a poll to be wrong, and the president-elect’s penchant for targeting those who publish unflattering things about him is cause for serious concern.

“Welcome to the authoritarian weaponization of the state and waste of taxpayer $ on vanity crusades: Anyone whose work seems to criticize the leader or produce results that he does not like must be investigated,” authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat warned on X.

An authoritarianism scholar sounded alarm bells that Donald Trump’s incoming Cabinet nominees will do far more than usher a new conservatism into the federal government. Instead, they’ll challenge the system to the point of rendering federal agencies practically ineffective and vulnerable to complete dismantling.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Yale history professor Timothy Snyder insisted that Trump’s nominees to lead the executive branch aren’t just “poor choices in the traditional sense.”

“Each of them individually is historically bad,” said Snyder. “But taken together, these are not people who are going to be bad at their jobs in some sort of normal sense. Taken together, these appointments suggest an attempt to actually make the American government dysfunctional, to make it fall apart, to pervert it, to have it do things that it’s not supposed to do until it’s not capable of doing anything at all.”

For instance, Trump’s choice for director of national intelligence, former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, regularly amplifies Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories. Her role would have her oversee 18 intelligence agencies, but critics—even in the House Intelligence Committee—have drawn attention to the danger of her nomination considering her particular affinity for foreign dictators such as Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Responding to a clip of Gabbard from February 2022—shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine—in which the former Democrat claimed that Ukraine should “embrace the spirit of Aloha” and relinquish any military alliances with NATO or Russia, Snyder argued that “it’s not just that these people are not qualified enough.”

“It’s not just that they’re totally unqualified, it’s that they’re anti-qualified. They are qualified to do the opposite of the thing that they are supposed to do,” Snyder said.

“Tulsi Gabbard is talking about a moment when Russian forces are approaching the Ukrainian capital. When Russian assassination squads are attempting to kill the Ukrainian head of state, and she’s advising people that all we have to do is summon up a magic word, and in effect surrender all of Ukraine to Russia,” Snyder continued. “And it’s not naïve. It sounds naïve but it’s not. What it’s doing is trying to prepare the way for more Ukrainian suffering. It’s saying, he who invades is right.”

Donald Trump and his allies have characterized the 2024 election as an overwhelming victory—and a mandate for shock politics, mass deportations, and the transformation of the country’s foreign and domestic policy. There’s just one problem: They didn’t actually win by much.

CNN’s Harry Enten reports that Trump is now under 50 percent for the popular vote, and his margin is the forty-fourth worst out of 51 presidential elections since 1824. Four Democrats won Senate seats in states that Trump won (Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada), compared to zero in the 2016 and 2020 elections. And while Republicans held on to their House majority, if results hold, their 221–214 margin will be the smallest majority in the 50-state era.

Trump's mandate? It's very shallow. Trump's now under 50% in the popular vote. His margin ranks 44 of 51 since 1824.

Weak coattails: 4 Dems won for Senate in states Trump won. (It was 0 in 2016 & 2020.)

The GOP is on track for smallest House majority since there were 50 states. pic.twitter.com/FaE80nk4T6

Trump’s appointments are not going to help with the House’s Republican majority, with many of Trump’s choices being elected GOP members. These include Representatives Elise Stefanik as his U.N. ambassador, Mike Waltz as his national security adviser, and Matt Gaetz (who has already resigned) as his attorney general, among others.

Republicans will point out that Trump in 2024 became the first GOP presidential candidate to win........

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