Federal charge lands after undercover tapeThe Justice Department says Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong was charged Monday with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote. If convicted, she faces up to five years in federal prison, a penalty that suggests federal law still disapproves of buying civic paperwork like it is parking validation. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said false registrations weaken trust in elections, especially when cash is part of the deal. That is a fair point, and it should not take an indictment to make it.What the Skid Row footage showedO’Keefe Media Group released its investigation in March after sending journalists undercover on Skid Row in Los Angeles, where they posed as homeless people. The group said petitioners offered about $7 to $10 per signature and that some could make up to $1,000 a day. It also said its footage showed 28 instances of cash changing hands for ballot signatures and voter registration forms. When election work starts looking like a street-corner wage plan, the public has reason to squint. The deeper problem is the maze of nonprofits, campaign helpers, and paperwork rules that lets everyone claim innocence while the incentives keep waving their…

The book that public money touched According to union filings reviewed by the Freedom Foundation and reported by the New York Post, the American Federation of Teachers spent more than $1.4 million on expenses tied to Randi Weingarten's 2025 book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers. The filing covers work done while the book was being developed and promoted. The biggest line items raise the sort of questions that usually arrive after the celebratory press release has already been sent. The expenses included consultants, a law firm, a fact-checker, a photographer, a literary agency, and AFT staff who were listed in the acknowledgments. In other words, a lot of people were paid to make a book about public education look like a grassroots crusade. The consultants and the lawyers The filing shows more than $400,000 paid to commentator Sally Kohn during the book's development window from September 2024 to April 2025. Kohn advertises ghostwriting services, and Weingarten thanked her as an indispensable collaborator. The Freedom Foundation says that looks like ghostwriting funded by union dues. The AFT also paid nearly $977,275 to Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. One of its attorneys, Charles Moerdler, was thanked in the book for reviewing the…