08/25/26
Title
Legal Challenges on Legal Challenges on Legal Challenges
Good morning! It’s Tuesday, August 25th
National Whiskey Sour Day
Don’t mind if I do!
And now, the news.
Mail-In Voting
-via AP News, Reuters, Brookings,
Starting with voting. Uh oh!
We are seventy days away from the midterm elections. We’re less than a month before the first ballots can be cast (in Illinois, their early voting starts first – September 24th).
And on Monday, the Supreme Court, which has a clear history of suppressing voting rights… did it again!
In March, Trump signed an executive order that would see his administration creating lists of eligible voters and then, following that, the U.S. Postal Service would only deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists.
Democratic officials in 23 states and DC sued to block the order, arguing that the Constitution gives states and Congress the power to run elections.
A lower court held that they were right and this order was illegal, but on Monday the Supremes said… yeah that’s fine. We’re still gonna let it go through. Historically, we hate voting.
Now, here’s the thing – this is bad BUT it’s not the end of the world and that distinction is important.
Obviously any type of voter suppression at all isn’t good.
HOWEVER, it’s unclear whether the changes Trump wants can be implemented before ballots need to go out. Because there will be legal challenges on legal challenges on legal challenges to this order. That will slow things down even further.
And there should be! Because even though Trump hasn’t stopped talking about fraud by voters and how bad it is and how he won the 2020 election… he has never shown proof. Him opening his mouth to say there’s been fraud isn’t proof. There hasn’t actually been any proof. At all.
Since 1982, there have been 22 elections, 11 presidential, 11 midterms. That’s a total of about 2,189,518,776 ballots.
The Heritage Foundation, which is a far-right think tank that really wants to make you think fraud is out of control, lists 1,620 cases of fraud by voters on their website since they first started tracking it.
2,189,518,776 ballots. 1,620 cases of fraud by voters.
For a rate of .0-0-0-0-0-0-7%
Six zeros before the seven.
And those 1,620 have likely been exaggerated because not everyone was convicted.
A court did, however, find that Trump did insurrection. That’s real. That’s more real than the fraud he’s so afraid of.
He also votes by mail!! He just did it this month! On August 18th, he voted by mail in the Florida Republican primary.
He is only doing this because he knows that turnout is how Democrats will win. This whole thing turns on turnout.
Which is why I need you to understand that this is bad, but not the end of the world.
You can still vote by mail, until the law changes.
And you MUST. We have to win the midterms because Congress makes the laws. They decide how voting works.
And this guy is cheating, and the Republicans are letting him, simply because, instead of trying to help people, he is screwing them over.
Cheating to win, instead of working to win your vote.
How on earth are people okay with that?
Anyway, the point is… go vote.
Iranian Sanctions
-via Axios
Dubbed Operation Economic Outcast (dorks!), Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Monday that the U.S. will impose sanctions on countries and entities who do business with Iran.
When will they go into effect?
Don’t ask silly questions!
Bessent said: "I'm not going to set a timeline, but we do not have infinite patience here."
But he also said… every country will be given a defined timeline to shut down its Iran-related business activity. So which is Scott??
Apparently a major financial institution, though we don’t yet know which one, will be sanctioned by the end of this week because it conducts business with Iran.
Hey Kim, aren’t there already sanctions against Iran?
Yeah and they haven’t done anything to make Iran change their behavior. So what’s this now?
Anyway, they gave the operation a name so everyone’s really proud of him.
49ers Owner Arrested
-via CNN
On Sunday, Jed York, the owner of the 49ers, was arrested and accused of “engaging in prostitution” after he responded to an undercover ad on a known prostitution website and "arranged to have sexual activity with the female in exchange for $140."
He also pleaded no contest to the charges of disorderly conduct and possession of criminal tools.
In Ohio?? You live in San Francisco.
I mean, I’m not saying do this there. Don’t do it at all. But… $140 in Ohio?
All people are different people I guess.
Reno Fires
-via NY Times
In Reno, Nevada, 42,000 people have been evacuated (with 23,000 remaining evacuated) and another 40,000 are in the evacuation warning zone, as the Hawk Fire continues to grow.
The fire, which is confirmed to have been caused by humans, is currently at least 27% contained but has torn through more than 15,000 acres since it started on Saturday.
Indiana Power Outage
-via CBS News
In Northwest Indiana, more than 10,000 homes and businesses have been without power for more than two weeks after storms on August 11th caused an outage that hasn’t been able to be fixed due, in part, to the debris and downed power lines that prevent crews from being able to turn the power back on.
The 10,000 is down from the original 350,000 customers that lost power.
NIPSCO, Northern Indiana Public Service Company, is the one responsible for the outage with Indiana’s governor Braun calling for state agencies to investigate why it’s taking so long to get the power back on.
There have been accounts of looting and robberies as people without power grow desperate for even generators and flashlights.
NIPSCO predicts most customers will have power today – which is exactly two weeks from when the power went out.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
Let me go back to voting for a second. Yeah you thought you got out of a lecture, and yet… here we are…
They wouldn’t be doing any of this… the redistricting, the lawsuits, the bills… none of it… if Trump and his little buddies weren’t terrified, absolutely terrified, of your vote.
That’s all this is about.
They’re terrified of what it means when you cast your ballot this November. (And every other time after that.) Because the idea that you might put your own well-being ahead of their ability to keep power and make money that you’ll never see a dime of… it scares them.
As it should.
Because they don’t care. About you. About me. About what’s best for this country. Only what’s best for them. And that, more than party loyalty, should be what people are thinking about when they cast their ballots.
435 House seats. 33 Senate seats.