**Donald Trump’s efforts to tamper with the midterms are coming to light, **as lawyers prepare to battle his administration in court.
For a guy who habitually
votes by mail, President Donald Trump sure does hate it when other people vote by mail. In fact, he’s so against the practice (for everyone else!) that his Postal Service is allegedly rushing to secretly seize control of mail-in voting before the midterms, and ignoring a court order blocking the takeover.
That’s according to a
whistleblower reportfiled by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) this morning. The revelation is raising fears that the Trump administration will try to tamper with the elections in November, and potentially put millions of ballots at risk, no matter what the courts say.
The Postal Service has adopted a “zero-percent failure” policy for delivering mail-in ballots to voters, according to an anonymous federal official
cited in the report. What does that mean? State officials send the Postal Service ballots to distribute to voters. In recent months, the Postal Service built a new system to screen the ballots — and reject any that cannot be “verified,” the report reads. The zero-percent failure clause means a single problem could prompt officials to trash an entire batch of tens of thousands of ballots.
“For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to USPS and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the Portal — because, for example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they’ve moved — then USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well,” according to the report.
The upshot: “Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the report reads.
The Postal Service has said that it won’t deliver ballots unless states provide a list of their voters. If it follows through, voting
could becomedifficult — or even impossible — in states that refuse to do so. (States control elections, not the federal government, which is why there’s no national voter list.)
Legal groups are ready to take Trump to court if he tries anything funny.
The court system has provided one of the few bulwarks against full-fledged authoritarian rule in Trump’s second term. The midterms may be the most important test yet of whether the president can successfully rig elections to keep his total power over Congress.
“For the first time in United States history, we have a president that doesn’t actually want the American people to vote,” Skye Perryman, president of the prominent legal organization Democracy Forward, told
What A Day.“He doesn’t want the American people to be able to determine the course of the country.”
Once
describedas “the single largest source of Trump’s legal troubles,” Democracy Forward has played a critical role in countering the president’s excesses since last year, filing 350 cases against the administration, a spokesperson told me. Its biggest wins (so far) include stopping the so-called anti-weaponization fund, blocking ICE raids in places of worship, and halting DOGE access to private Social Security data.
“I am confident that lawyers are going to be able to swiftly file legal challenges to address much of what the president will attempt to do,” Perryman said, “and I am also confident that the American people are going to push back.”
**Why does Trump vote by mail, even though he’s against the practice? **“Because I happen to be in the White House and I won’t be able to go to Florida to vote,” he once told a reporter.
On a happier note: Shoutout to one of the all-time great indie rock bangers, Such Great Heights, by one of my favorite bands, The Postal Service.
** A 20-year-old Haitian immigrant in Ohio recently parked** on the side of the highway, walked into traffic, and got hit and killed by a tractor trailer, according to local authorities. The man’s family believes it was a suicide, saying he became distraught after losing his temporary protected status and being forced to wear an ankle monitor, following a new Trump administration policy. “He felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father wrote in a statement.
** Only 14 percent of Americans support Donald Trump’s **attempt to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” according to a new poll. This will surely help Republicans win big in the midterms! He’s sure to win over all the freshwater aqua-patriots!
** Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s resignation came after **he met with Trump and expressed his concerns about the Army under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “Trump was surprised when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth,”
** A California man who brought a guillotine **to Washington, D.C. and parked it near the Capitol told the
** Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed** officially got under Vice President JD Vance’s skin after mentioning his wife, Usha, in a tweet earlier this week. “Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth because she’s way out of your league,” Vance said during a rally on Monday, in support of El-Sayed’s opponent. Who does Vance think he is,
** California passed a law banning social media companies** from allowing “addictive” features for users under 16 years old. The law takes aim at auto-playing videos, algorithmically curated feeds and other features.
** Netflix is releasing a documentary this week **about Donald Trump’s decoy plane scandal in Turkey, which “unpacks the incident through firsthand accounts” from the press, a former Secret Service, and a former Air Force One crew member, the streaming service announced. Even more mysterious than the scandal: How did Netflix make this so fast?!
** Researchers off the coast of New York are catching** and tagging sharks in an effort to better understand one of the few known great white shark nurseries in the world. What are those, you ask? They’re special locations where sharks spend their early years, eating, growing, and learning how to be apex predators. The study hopes to “show that these sharks are far from mindless eating machines,” one researcher said.
** Pop star Olivia Rodrigo’s female-focused Daisy Chain** music festival went off without a hitch over the weekend, as tens of thousands of fans danced along to Chappell Roan’s
** European scientists have created so-called **“little big bangs” to study the matter that appeared at the beginning of the universe. Please just don’t make any big big bangs!
** A 98-year-old man from San Diego completed his **local library’s summer reading challenge for the second year in a row. You won’t catch him flipping through “Infinite Jest,” however; he’s more into children’s books and the Bible these days. “It gets you involved and gives you the knowledge of other people,” the man said. And yes, he plans to complete next summer’s reading challenge, too.
