By Jamelle Bouie / RSN – New York Times / August 30, 2026
So far, the president’s plot to subvert the integrity of the midterm elections looks like this.
Issue a rule requiring states to give lists of mail-in voters to the Postal Service if their citizens hope to receive mail-in ballots. Knowing that this is a blatantly unconstitutional seizure of the states’ prerogative to run their own elections, count on a federal court to block the rule. Then challenge the injunction, arguing — under the Supreme Court’s “Purcell principle” — that it is too late to make any adjustments to voting procedures, and that the new rules should be treated as the status quo. Then hope that the Supreme Court accepts the argument that the new rules are the status quo and therefore can’t be blocked.
This would leave states that rely on mail-in voting scrambling to accommodate the new rules, leading to the kind of chaos that might keep voters from casting a ballot in the first place. And in states that reject the rules, the administration can tar the results as fraudulent. None of this would stop the public from electing a Democratic majority, but it could give that majority the taint of illegitimacy — and even tee up a situation where new members are challenged in the next session.
It is important to say that there is no way to know, at this point, if any of this will actually work in the end. But it clearly is the plan.
To wit, earlier this week the Supreme Court paused a lower court injunction on the proposed ballot rule, writing that it had not been formally issued yet by the U.S.P.S., so the states that sued could not demonstrate harm. Since then, the Postal Service has issued its rule and a Federal District Court has issued a temporary restraining order, blocking implementation. The administration has appealed this decision, and the Supreme Court is set to hear the case on the merits in a number of weeks, if not days.
From there, the court will have to decide whether it will follow the Constitution — which clearly leaves election administration to the states, unless Congress intervenes — or contrive again to contort the law and give the president a win, allowing him to pursue his irrational crusade against mail-in voting and giving him the tools — if not to sabotage the midterms outright — then to create chaos and disruption.
I would not put much faith in the Supreme Court, but we’ll see what happens.
The details of what is happening here are important — that’s why I laid them out — but it’s also important to step back and make a more fundamental point: the president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself. And this is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation.
Please try to be considerate of other posters. Be respectful of everyone’s right to express themselves.
Well, yeah. trumpf said he would do this, and it is in line with the goals of miller and project 2025. So no news here.
But what is most distrubing to me is that the maga/repuglican controlled congress and scotus protect trumpf and his acolytes, which is what allows all this to actually happen. There is a bit of resistance from dems and a few independents and true republicans, but that is mostly in vain. And I fault the mainstream media for playing along and not reporting the danger/destruction and treason of what they are doing.
YUP. So many reasons. Lewis Powell and his agenda. Conservative majority SCOTUS legalizing bribery/owning legislators and buying elections over many years. FOX propaganda network. Cowardly conservatives & enablers. Corporate Dems. Jude Wanniski & the The Two Santa Claus Theory. Untaxed billionaire sociopaths. Pedophile protectors. And pathological incessant lying never questioned and believed by 30% of the ignorant and manipulated population.
Thom Hartmann compares Trump and his corrupt minions with Idi Amin in Uganda. Remember reading about that guy in the 70s? I do, haven’t thought about him since but…yeah I can see how Trump can be compared to him after reading this article. This I’m afraid is going to give you the chills. It did me.
And, like so many countries that we have all seen collapse into chaos and madness over the last 40 years across the world (with the ‘help’ of the US government), it’s happening right before our eyes…with the help of the US government. Such as it is.
One fact that nearly all United Statesians seem to ignore is that ALL empires die. Usually with much greed and stupidity and madness and violence. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t many many people in those empires who weren’t stupid or greedy or mad, but only that they saw what was coming but couldn’t get out of the way. Unfortunately we in this country may be on the cusp of experiencing that history.
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Sex, Money, and Revenge: What Happens When a Country Becomes One Man’s Property
When one man turns prosecutors, tax collectors, billionaires, and elections into weapons of personal power, democracy itself becomes the next thing he owns…
https://hartmannreport.com/p/sex-money-and-revenge-what-happens-8de?utm
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sealintheSelkirks
As a lawyer, I couldn’t be more disappointed and disgusted by the Supreme Court’s embrace of authoritarianism. It completely undermines their role as a fundamental element of power and turns them into a rubber stamp. But that is not all. They wear the robes, they count themselves among the uppermost of the elite, they have climbed the legal ladder to the highest rungs, only to deliver our beloved country to the most intractable and relentless thieves of freedom. How five or six members or affiliates of Opus Dei can ascend to power without a single comment by those responsible for vetting appointments is shocking. For theirs is not a Catholicism of mercy and compassion, of forgiveness and tolerance, but one of elitism and subjugation of everyone beneath their position to a subservient status. And the Court accomplished all of this by elevating a morally bankrupt President to a pedestal on which he is untouchable by the law. God forgive them.