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The far-right Supreme Court supermajority just let Donald Trump’s administration continue running voter rolls through an outdated citizenship database that’s already wrongly flagged eligible voters as non-citizens. Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told a Texas crowd that MAGA is dead and got cheers and applause for it. Louisiana’s Republican governor is declaring a statewide emergency as diesel prices hit new record highs just as farmers are starting the harvest season. And Trump is kicking off October in two of the reddest states on the map, despite promising to campaign in the most competitive districts in the country.
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On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision on the shadow docket to allow the continued use of a federal immigration verification system to check voter rolls for possible non-citizen voters. Today’s order officially halts a lower court ruling from June while litigation plays out in court.
That lower court ruling found that President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) violated voters’ privacy when it expanded the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, also known as SAVE. DHS has used the SAVE system for decades to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits. However, the Trump administration last year made it so states could run entire voter rolls through SAVE and search by Social Security number.
Federal law prevents mass voter purges within 90 days of an election, which means this decision likely won’t impact the midterms. But bulk voter checks can begin after the election, and officials can still use the SAVE system right now to screen individual voters.
This ruling is particularly bad, because SAVE has been consistently error-prone. ProPublica found that the system has falsely labeled actual U.S. citizens as non0citizens in at least five states. In Texas, it flagged hundreds of people who had registered to vote through the state Department of Public Safety, which already requires registrantws to show proof of citizenship.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — who former President Joe Biden appointed in 2022 — specifically pointed to her Texas in her dissent, writing that one plaintiff had her voter registration revoked without her knowledge. She argued that actual harm to registered voters should outweigh “the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both of whom are Barack Obama appointees, joined her.
This marks a rare victory for Trump in regard to voting, as his administration is currently 0 for 25 in cases seeking to obtain state voter rolls.
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Republican former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia recently spoke at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, where she declared that the movement she once proudly associated with is now over.
Greene told the assembled crowd that “Trump has lied so much to us and betrayed us so incredibly, beyond any of my comprehension.” she then added: “I think MAGA is dead,” which drew cheers and applause from the crowd.
The former Georgia congresswoman said she split with Trump due to his handling to the Epstein files. Greene went on to say that the call to delay releasing the files came “directly from the top,” and that Trump personally made sure then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune fell in line.
Last year, Greene was one of only four House Republicans who supported the discharge petition from Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democrat Ro Khanna of California. That petition then forced a vote by the full House. Greene recalled getting a personal phone call from Trump at that point, who reportedly told her, “Marjorie, people you know will get hurt, my friends, people you know at Mar-a-Lago.”
The House ultimately passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act by a near-unanimous vote last November, with Trump signing it the next day after unanimous passage in the GOP-controlled Senate. Greene officially announced her resignation a few days later after Trump labeled her as a “traitor” and endorsed her Republican primary opponent. The former lawmaker also told the Austin crowd that and after her son received a death threat, Trump reportedly texted her that she “deserved it.” She’s since referred to the MAGA movement as a “cult” and has flirted with the idea of launching a third party.
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Louisiana’s Republican Governor, Jeff Landry, is now declaring a state of emergency as diesel prices hit new record highs during the peak of the harvest season.
The governor’s office pegs the average price for a gallon of diesel in the Bayou State at about $6.03. Landry stated in his executive that the current price of diesel is roughly 113 percent higher than what Louisiana State University’s AgCenter economists estimated when they built farmers’ harvest budgets.
Landry’s order allows for farmers and timber harvesters use dyed diesel, which is the untaxed fuel normally set aside for off-road use in vehicles registered for farm or forest products work. The emergency will run through October 22. It also directs the state’s secretary of revenue to ask the IRS for federal penalty relief.
Jim Simon, who is general manager of the American Sugar Cane League, said the order could end up saving Louisiana’s sugarcane farmers more than $8 million over the harvest season. Diesel prices have continued to skyrocket as a result of Trump’s ongoing war with Iran, which is about to stretch on into its eighth month with still no clear end in sight.
At a recent Rose Garden event earlier this month, Trump told GOP members of Congress he would visit all 35 of the most competitive House districts in the country before the November 3 midterms. Instead, he’s kicking off October with rallies in deep-red Durant, Oklahoma and Mobile, Alabama.
The Republican National Committee justified the decision by saying both cities are in media markets that cross state lines, allowing Trump to amplify his speech in Durant to voters in Texas. In the Lone Star State, Trump-backed Attorney General Ken Paxton is neck-and-neck with Democrat James Talarico and incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott is attempting to fend off a challenge from Democrat Gina Hinojosa. Mobile is near the Florida panhandle, where Republicans are also attempting to hold onto both the governor’s mansion and a Republican U.S. Senate seat.
Trump’s announcement comes as Republicans have had to devote a significant portion of their war chest to red states that were once considered safe GOP strongholds. The president’s cratering approval rating has also led some GOP candidates to downplay their association with Trump on their campaign websites while also calling for an end to his deeply unpopular war with Iran.
Even in these states, Trump’s presence won’t guarantee a GOP victory. In Oklahoma, Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei is in a competitive race with Democratic House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson. In Alabama, former Democratic U.S. Senator Doug Jones is running for governor against current U.S. Senator and devout Trump ally Tommy Tuberville.
Viet Shelton, who is a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, suggested that the president making stops in Alabama and Oklahoma shows just how dire Republicans’ midterm outlook really is. He told the Associated Press: “The political floor is falling out from underneath Trump and Congressional Republicans, forcing them to scramble to spend and campaign in deep red territory in the final weeks.”
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