The Supreme Court on Friday let Trump switch his citizenship database back on against state voter rolls, six weeks before Election Day. Eleven days ago the same justices refused his bid to restrict mail ballots. That was a different case. This time they sided with him. The order freezes Judge Sparkle Sooknanan's June ruling that the overhauled SAVE system broke three federal privacy laws — the government, she wrote, had "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens." Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices SAVE has run 65 million voters in 26 states and flagged 28,635 as possible noncitizens. The flags miss: election officials in Travis County, Texas checked 97 of them and found at least one in ten was a citizen. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent for the three liberals. Federal law bars systematic purges within 90 days of an election, so the AP expects a limited midterm effect. The list is live while people are already voting.
Trump took Xi Jinping to the National Archives on Friday to see the Constitution, a day after showing him the East Wing ballroom site he now calls the Great Hall of the United States — Mao's name for the Tiananmen Square hall where China's legislature votes 2,958 to 2 for Xi. Xi flies home with an eagle statue, a trade truce extended to January 10, no AI deal. Trump keeps a $600 million ballroom a court says needs Congress, and the Sharpie he used on the fire stairs. "I am the code," he told his architect, who quit.
House Republicans are on track to lose their majority, Axios reported Friday, after the Cook Political Report moved 15 races toward Democrats, who need only three seats. NBC's polling average gives Democrats their widest lead yet, 52 to 43, with independents driving the shift. In Florida, a Republican county chair told Politico the party is "hemorrhaging," and former congressman Carlos Curbelo called it "2018 vibes." Six weeks out, Trump's party is running from him.
A 30-second ad praising Trump's "largest tax cuts in history" ran on Fox News and Newsmax this week stamped "paid for by the U.S. government," the AP and Washington Post reported. It cost $14,000. Congress has banned federal money for "publicity or propaganda" since the 1950s. Nobody has said which agency paid. Trump turned the government into his campaign.
Rep. Steve Cohen filed 26 articles of impeachment against Trump on Thursday, the most ever against a sitting president: "the most impeachable president our country has ever endured." Cohen filed five in 2017. Trump earned 21 more.
Trump spends while his party runs. The Court handed him a list of 28,635 names to work through in the last six weeks; he is paying for a campaign ad with your money and a ballroom Congress never approved; and the Republicans who have to face voters in November are telling Politico they are hemorrhaging. He is buying the election he can. Watch whether a single Republican in a swing seat says the word "SAVE" out loud before November 3.
FiveStack — 3 PM ET. The Court hands Trump the voter list, Xi goes home, and the House slips.
Narativ laid out the plan to federalize the voter rolls in March. Today the Court switched it on.
