Maggie's Opinions

08/25/2026

246. Making Sense of the Mail-in Ballots Ruling

The Supreme Court’s grant of a stay in one of the mail-in ballot cases is deeply wrong, but it’s also not the main event over whether Trump’s patently unlawful executive order can take effect.

Steve Vladeck
Aug 24

I apologize in advance for writing a stream-of-consciousness post in a hurry (and for the errors that may result), but I want to provide a (short) bit of context for the headlines folks are seeing about the Supreme Court’s Monday afternoon ruling in Trump v. California, in which the Court (over dissents from the the three Democratic appointees) granted President Trump’s application to stay a district court injunction that was blocking two parts (sections 2 and 3) of his March executive order purporting to impose limits on mail-in voting. (For background and links to the relevant earlier developments, see this earlier bonus post, from which I’ve removed the paywall.)

To understand what’s going on, I’m going to try to tee this up as a progression of eight different points:

First, the executive order at issue has two different sets of provisions under challenge. Section 2 of the EO is directed toward DHS, and deals with the sharing of “citizenship lists” between the federal government and states. Section 3 (the really troubling part) is directed toward the U.S. Postal Service, and is the part that, if fully implemented, would allow the USPS to refuse to deliver mail-in ballots in states that don’t match their voter rolls to DHS’s own (likely deeply incomplete) list. So keep these two different sections in mind.

Second, there are two different cases at the forefront of challenges to the executive order, both pending before Judge Talwani in the District of Massachusetts. One is California v. Trump (a challenge by blue states); the other is League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump (a challenge by private organizations/voters). Critically, Judge Talwani has issued injunctions against the executive order in both cases. But Monday’s Supreme Court ruling applies only to one of them—the one brought by the states. For unimportant procedural reasons, the League of Women Voters case moved a bit slower, and Judge Talwani’s injunction in that case remains in effect. Even though the Solicitor General had asked the Supreme Court to reach out and pour cold water on that injunction, too, I don’t see anything in the 10-page majority opinion that speaks to the validity of that injunction one way or the other.

Third, late Friday night, the U.S. Postal Service (finally) released the “Final Rule” that was supposed to be published by the end of July that purports to implement Trump’s executive order. It’s that rule, not the executive order itself, that would be the basis for the USPS messing with mail-in ballots come October and November. The rule itself acknowledges the injunctions in both the California and League of Women Voters cases, and provides it won’t go into effect so long as those injunctions remain in force (as one of them still does). And in the League of Women Voters case, Judge Talwani has already indicated that she is inclined to block that rule, too—for the same reasons she enjoined the executive order. That ruling may come as soon as tomorrow—which is when any opposition to such a ruling from the government is due at 8:00 a.m. ET. (The rule is currently set to be “published” in the Federal Register on Wednesday.)

Fourth, and just to be as clear as possible about this, it’s the still-to-come litigation over the USPS Final Rule that’s going to be critical here. In a moment, I’ll get to how the majority opinion from the Supreme Court may and may not influence the trajectory of the League of Women Voters case, but until and unless the injunction of the executive order in that case, or a subsequent TRO or injunction of the USPS Final Rule itself, is vacated by the First Circuit or the Supreme Court, the status quo (that is to say, no mail-in ballot mischief) will persist. The USPS Final Rule itself can’t go into effect until the League of Women Voters injunction is frozen.

Fifth, and turning to the Supreme Court’s actual ruling, the core of the majority opinion is that the blue states brought their challenge too soon. My own view is that both of the dissenting opinions (one by Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kagan; and one by Justice Jackson) already had the better of this argument before the USPS issued its Final Rule last Friday. But to suggest today that these cases are premature is, to use a technical word, bo****ks. It’s not going to matter, because the League of Women Voters case will almost certainly be “ripe.” But it’s still a ridiculous rationalization by the Court that I’ll try to write more about later this week.

Sixth, the “ripeness” part of the opinion likely won’t matter much in the League of Women Voters case. Neither will the standing analysis, since voters dealing with a USPS Final Rule are, in numerous material respects, differently situated from blue states challenging the executive order on its face. The part of the majority opinion that may carry over is its discussion of “irreparable harm.” Justice Jackson, as usual, is right about how the majority is once again perverting that concept (as I noted just this morning in discussing the Chief Justice’s “administrative stay” in the ballroom case). But the majority’s wrongheaded irreparable harm analysis will surely apply to a challenge to the USPS Final Rule, too. That should mean that the inevitable emergency application in the League of Women Voters case comes down to the underlying legality of the USPS Final Rule (which would be bad for Trump), except that…

Seventh, the shadow looming over all of this is the “Purcell principle,” the idea that, as election day draws nigh, federal courts should stay their hand rather than issue coercive orders changing the rules for when and how people vote. Purcell is the source of significant controversy and criticism, almost all of it deserved. Among the charges are that (some of) the justices are ruthlessly inconsistent in when they do and don’t apply Purcell—leading to the worry that an injunction against the USPS Final Rule might be deemed “too close to the election,” and stayed under Purcell. That’s a genuine concern, and given the Court’s own repeated transgressions of the Purcell principle earlier this term in Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama, to hide behind it to allow the USPS Final Rule to go into effect would be as indefensible and anti-democratic a ruling as the Court has handed down in a very long time. That brings me to…

Eighth, there’s still a lot to play for in these cases. My own view is that the Court should have denied the stay, especially with respect to section 3, for the reasons the unanimous First Circuit panel articulated in California (Judge Dunlap dissented only as to section 2). But even with tonight’s stay, section 3 remains blocked; the USPS Final Rule remains frozen; and the real question is going to be what happens with the (seemingly inevitable) TRO or injunction against the USPS Final Rule that’s still to come in the League of Women Voters case.

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08/24/2026

The most revealing thing about Hakeem Jeffries’s recent private meeting with Jared Kushner may not be that it happened — although it is shocking that he would sit with someone like Kushner, who should be the subject of the first House Oversight Committee hearing when Democrats gain control of the House. Still, Jeffries can make the argument that political leaders talk to adversaries for a number of reasons, including that back channels to the executive branch can be useful, even if the president of the United States is off his rocker and neither he nor anyone around him is an honest broker.

The worst thing about this meeting is that Jeffries allowed himself to be entrapped in a way that a fourth grader would have seen coming. This alone raises questions about his ability to maneuver as speaker and lead an opposition party against a malignant force whose playbook, after a decade, should be patently obvious.

Let’s review the background of how we came to learn about Jeffries’ recent sit-down with Kushner, the corrupt man-child who has parlayed his marriage to the president’s favorite child into a multi-billion dollar grift. We do not know who gave the story to Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni but if you have followed the Times’ coverage of the Trump era and particularly these reporters’ stories about the Kushners, a clear pattern emerges. Jared and Ivanka Trump always come across looking like the reasonable statespeople trying to temper the crazies in the room, including Donald Trump.

(In reality, Kushner and Ivanka are worse than Trump’s enablers. They have grifted off their proximity to the president, enriching themselves at the expense of America’s national security. Kushner’s ties to foreign officials raised so many concerns during his White House stint that the national intelligence community opposed giving him a security clearance — a decision that his father-in-law disgracefully overrode.

The fingerprints of this leak point in one direction. And that direction explains in stark clarity why Jeffries should never have sat with Kushner, under any circumstances. More tellingly, it underscores why he is not prepared for primetime in the Trump era. ...

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08/24/2026

08/23/2026

WHITE HOUSE CAUGHT IN A NEW EPSTEIN SCANDAL
The Justice Department’s justification for withholding a set of Epstein-related FBI notes may have just collapsed. Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act — which passed the House 427-1 — the DOJ has withheld handwritten FBI interview notes, with Attorney General Todd Blanche claiming they’re “substantially similar” to an interview report already released and too difficult to redact. A federal judge wasn’t buying it even before this weekend: in June, Judge Emmet Sullivan found Blanche “has conceded that he is in violation” of the Act and ordered unredacted production in journalist Katie Phang’s ongoing lawsuit. Then came Saturday’s development: according to a report by data researcher Rye Howard-Stone, nearly two dozen of those very notes have been sitting online for months — fully unredacted, uploaded by a conservative Washington Examiner journalist — and Phang says they are not, in fact, duplicative of anything previously released. The notes stem from 2019 FBI interviews with a woman who accused Trump and Epstein of abusing her beginning when she was 13, and whom a Justice Department source told the Miami Herald the FBI found credible; Trump faces no criminal charges and has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing related to Epstein. Rep. Ted Lieu responded by publicly demanding Blanche name the legal exception that permitted the withholding: “You can’t, because you are an unethical lawyer and illegally withheld those notes” — closing with a pointed reminder that November is coming.

Why it matters: Congress voted 427-1 for transparency, a federal judge found the attorney general in violation, and now the documents the DOJ claimed it couldn’t safely release were reportedly public the entire time — which means the redaction excuse protected no one except the people named. The cover-up machinery isn’t just corrupt; it’s incompetent, and Democrats like Lieu are right to make its operators answer under oath.

By the numbers: 427-1 — the House vote for the transparency law the DOJ’s own concessions show it violated.

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08/23/2026

TRUMP THROWS TANTRUM AFTER NATIONAL GUARD FOUND TO NOT HAVE REDUCED CRIME IN WASHINGTON D.C.

When the facts aren’t on Trump’s side, he doesn’t dispute them — he tries to make disputing him too expensive. The New York Times reported Friday that Trump’s personal attorney sent the Center for American Progress a letter threatening a $5 billion defamation suit unless the think tank withdrew a research report, apologized, and paid the president financial compensation — by 5 p.m. Friday. The letter closed: “PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY.” The offending research: a July 13 analysis of homicide, violent crime, and gun victimization data in Washington, Los Angeles, and Memphis dating to January 2023, which found no evidence connecting Trump’s National Guard deployments to crime reductions — the declines, researchers found, were underway before he took office — and projected the deployments’ taxpayer cost would top $1.7 billion through 2026. Trump had already attacked the report on Truth Social as a Radical Left scam and threatened its funders. CAP didn’t blink: president Neera Tanden said the organization would neither cower nor bend, and attorney Kevin Metz rejected the threat flatly — “Truth is not and cannot be defamation” — while noting that if Trump actually sues, discovery would give CAP access to the deployments’ internal records. It’s the second time in a week the administration’s answer to unwelcome facts was legal warfare: ABC and Disney sued the FCC Tuesday over exactly this playbook.

Why it matters: You don’t threaten a $5 billion lawsuit over research you can refute — you refute it. The threat is the confession: the administration has no data showing its $1.7 billion deployments worked, so it’s trying to make publishing the truth financially fatal. Every institution that stands firm, from Disney to a think tank, makes the intimidation worth less.

By the numbers: $1.7 billion — the projected taxpayer cost of Guard deployments that researchers found no evidence reduced crime.

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08/23/2026

NATALIE HARP OUTTED AS AUTHOR OF DONALD TRUMP’S JANUARY 6TH MEMO TO CONGRESS

The Natalie Harp story just moved from palace intrigue to the historical record. A metadata analysis — first reported by independent journalist Marcy Wheeler and independently verified by the Daily Beast — identifies Harp as the document author of the 14-page memo Trump sent the January 6th congressional committee in October 2022, created on her account the morning after the committee voted 9-0 to subpoena him. The memo is one of the foundational texts of election denial, opening in all caps: “THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” — before attacking committee members as partisan hacks and defending the January 6 crowd as patriots. The White House did not respond to the Beast’s request for comment. The finding recasts everything already on the record about Harp’s role: this is the aide who worked in the White House for a year while declining to seek a security clearance until Trump personally intervened, and whom current and former administration officials told the Wall Street Journal has fed the president information that was “false or misleading” — all on a $150,000 taxpayer-funded salary. As the late Sen. Lindsey Graham once put it, she was the person to talk to if you wanted to get something to Trump.

Why it matters: For a week, Washington debated whether the Harp story was serious or salacious. Here’s the answer: the unvetted aide with unfettered access wasn’t just printing articles — the metadata indicates she was drafting the president’s official defiance of a congressional subpoena, in service of the lie that fueled January 6th. The person no background check ever cleared helped write the history.

By the numbers: 9-0 — the committee vote to subpoena Trump; the memo bearing Harp’s authorship was created the next morning.

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08/23/2026

On August 17, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg recorded a video to assure those Americans who oppose the Trump administration that they are in the large majority. He noted that the strategy Republicans are pursuing shows how unpopular they are.

“Think about it,” he said. “They’re not out there showing that the economy is somehow better than it looks…. They’re not defending their cuts to healthcare, they’re not defending the tax cuts for the wealthy. They’re not defending the corruption that’s going on in Washington.”

“It’s too late for that,” he said, because “we’ve all seen that those policies have failed. They made us all pay tariffs and said the reason we got to do this is to bring back manufacturing jobs…. Well, we paid the tariffs, and then America lost manufacturing jobs. They cut taxes for the rich. They said we’ve got to do that in order to speed up economic growth. And what happened? Economic growth slowed down…. They said they were going to cut costs and prices. Inflation is actually higher now than the day Donald Trump took office. They said they were gonna drain the swamp. And then they expect us to be okay with the first family making a billion dollars or more in crypto deals while the president’s in office….

“A lot of people believed this president and Republicans when they said no new wars. Then, what do we get? A war with Iran in the Middle East right now, which means all of us here at home are paying higher gas prices.”

The Republican strategy is not to change their policies, Buttigieg said. “It’s changing the maps. Changing the rules. Because that’s the only way they could win. They know they’re on the wrong side of the American people….

“You’re already in the majority if you think that we need healthcare for all, not Medicaid cuts and cutting Obamacare…. Right now, if you think that the wealthiest people in the country need to be paying their fair share in taxes, which is more than they’re doing today, where they currently pay less than a lot of teachers and nurses and firefighters. You are definitely in the majority if you believe that the wealthiest nation in the world ought to do the best job of funding public education and making sure it works. Not this Republican approach, which is to literally eliminate the Department of Education. You’re not alone if you think that in any decent economy, one job ought to be enough. And you’re certainly not alone if you believe that a woman’s healthcare decisions ought to be up to her and no one else, that in a free country, you should get to be who you are, and love who you love, and live a life of your choosing. When you believe these things, you’re not just not alone. You’re part of a powerful majority. Really a supermajority of the American people.

“So, whether you’re a Democrat, an independent, or someone who has generally voted Republican in the past, most voters want the same things right now: to be led and represented by normal people who are good at getting things done. People want leaders who respect those who disagree or vote differently instead of calling them the enemy. People who know that God does not belong to a political party in the United States of America. Most voters want to elect leaders who are not simply trying to rebuild the past, but trying to create something new and better.”

08/22/2026

FARM STATE REPUBLICANS TORCH TRUMP’S ANTI-FARMING POLICIES

Trump announced on Truth Social Friday that for 90 days, the U.S. will let up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef in without out-of-quota tariffs, claiming a commitment that it sells 25% below market prices — with ground beef at a near-record $7.12 a pound in July, up 9.4% in a year, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited by Bloomberg. His own party detonated. Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana said he’d advised Trump against this for a year, warning the move will further harm struggling American ranchers — “most of whom are MAGA Republicans.” Nebraska’s Deb Fischer declared herself extremely disappointed; Sens. Ricketts and Daines and a half-dozen House Republicans piled on; Kentucky’s Thomas Massie called it “Worse than socialism!” Even Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tomi Lahren joined the revolt, with Lahren noting the imports are a gift to the very meatpacker monopolies ranchers have fought for decades. And former Pence chief of staff Marc Short spotted the logical trap, posting the equation the White House can’t answer: if lifting tariffs lowers prices, what do tariffs do? It’s the second farm-state revolt in two days — Sen. Kevin Cramer’s blanket hold on Trump nominees over betrayed wetland promises is still in effect.

Why it matters: To fix the grocery-price crisis his tariffs helped create, Trump just adopted the exact policy his movement calls a betrayal — and his own senators are saying the victims are MAGA’s base. There’s no version of this that works: either prices stay high and voters rage, or the fix works by admitting the entire tariff project raises prices. Democrats should clip Marc Short’s question and run it everywhere.

By the numbers: $7.12 per pound — near-record ground beef prices in July, up 9.4% in one year on Trump’s watch.

08/22/2026

AMERICANS REVOLT AGAINST TRUMP’S INSANE WHITE HOUSE RENOVATIONS

Harry Enten brought receipts Friday for what Americans think of Trump’s Washington makeover — the ballroom that replaced the demolished 123-year-old East Wing, the botched Reflecting Pool repair, the Kennedy Center takeover, and the proposed “Arc de Trump.” A Washington Post/Ipsos poll found 65% of Americans dissatisfied or upset with the projects against just 32% enthusiastic or satisfied — 33 points underwater. Among independents it’s a wipeout: 73% dissatisfied to 21% satisfied, 52 points under. “You win independents, you win elections,” Enten noted on CNN News Central — and these, he said, are the kinds of numbers that make election nights go very wrong. The priorities data may be even more damaging: CBS News/YouGov found 64% of Americans say Trump is focusing too much on his D.C. projects, while 78% — four in five — say he’s focusing too little on lowering prices, the promise that won him the election. Enten added the historical marker: Trump is the only president ever to cross 50 points net-negative on inflation approval.

Why it matters: Every gilded ceiling is a campaign ad Democrats don’t have to pay for. Voters watching grocery bills climb are being told the urgent national project is a ballroom — and 78% of them, across party lines, have noticed the mismatch between what he promised and what he’s building.

By the numbers: 78% of Americans say the administration is focusing too little on lowering prices — the reason it was elected.

08/22/2026

JIMMY FALLON RIPS TRUMP AND “NATALIE” APART IN LATEST SKIT

The Natalie Harp story crossed its final threshold Thursday night: it stopped being a Washington story and became an American one. Jimmy Fallon devoted a chunk of his Tonight Show monologue to the week’s revelations about Trump’s ever-present aide, then staged a full sketch — interviewing a fake “Harp,” blond wig and all, scrunched into the back of a truck. “Wait. I’m sorry, are you—in Trump’s trunk right now?” Fallon asked, riffing on CNN’s verified report that Harp once climbed into the trunk of an SUV rather than be separated from Trump when his motorcade was full. The fake Harp’s denials escalated into a monologue about whispering love poetry so quietly the president thinks it’s the wind — before pulling out printed copies of the real devotional letters the New York Times and Daily Beast published this week. The sketch worked because the audience needed no explanation: the trunk, the letters, the “human printer” nickname, the year without a security clearance — all of it, reported by CNN, the Times, and MS NOW over the past week, has saturated the culture to the point where late night can assume everyone’s read the coverage.

Why it matters: Political scandals can be spun; punchlines can’t. When a White House crisis becomes a recurring late-night bit, it has escaped the containment of partisan media entirely — every persuadable American now knows this story, and they know it as a joke at the administration’s expense. Ask any veteran of past administrations: the sketch-comedy phase is the point of no return.

By the numbers: 4 separate outlets — CNN, the NYT, MS NOW, and the Daily Beast — whose verified reporting fed one late-night sketch.