Political News for August 22

Dear Everybody,

 

Here’s the news for August 22.

 

This is John Stith, filling in for Connie Willis for August 21-22-23.

 

Natalie Harp, Trump’s human printer and blankie is remaining in the news, but it’s mostly repeating the disturbing and stupefying things already reported. But her fanatical devotion to Trump is emblematic of the MAGA phenomenon in which MAGA simple doesn’t care that Trump was convicted of raping a woman, accused of rape by his own wife, and accused by dozens of women and girls. If liberals don’t like him, that seems to be the sole requirement.

 

Your Ballot May Be In The Mail. Or Not. Probably the news of the most import and risk is that late Friday, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 95-page final rule imposing new requirements on mailed ballots. USPS says it will not implement the rule while the current federal injunction remains in force—but it deliberately completed the rule so it can take effect immediately if courts lift the injunction before the November 3 midterms.

 

The rule would require states to provide USPS with lists identifying voters sent mail ballots and to use unique barcodes on outgoing and returning ballot envelopes. Most significantly, USPS could refuse to deliver ballots from states that do not comply. The controversial new element is conditioning delivery on state compliance and requiring disclosure of voter-linked information. The issue is not whether ballot tracking is sensible; it is whether an executive agency can effectively impose federal election-administration requirements on states without Congress enacting them. If appellate courts lift the injunction shortly before November, USPS has now positioned itself to change the rules immediately, disenfranchising millions. Until now, it seemed that the GOP was only interfering in the USPS to get things ready for it to be privatized for the benefit of some wealthy donor. Now it’s obvious they are weaponizing it to influence elections. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-postal-service-issues-rules-tighten-mail-in-voting-if-court-gives-ok-2026-08-22/

 

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas ruled Friday that the administration’s categorical suspension of immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries was “patently unlawful.” The State Department had justified the January policy by saying applicants from those countries posed elevated risks of becoming dependent on public assistance. Vargas concluded that Secretary of State Marco Rubio exceeded the authority Congress gave him. The policy affected applicants from countries including Brazil, Colombia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia and numerous African, Middle Eastern and Caribbean nations.

 

This is another separation-of-powers case disguised as immigration policy. Presidents possess unusually broad immigration authority, but broad is not unlimited. Here the court’s reasoning is essentially that Congress created a statutory decision-making system and the executive cannot replace it with a different one simply because that would make immigration policy easier to administer. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-strikes-down-policy-suspending-immigrant-visa-processing-75-nations-2026-08-22/

 

Leaving office to have more time to tamper with elections. Trump announced that his ally, Ed Martin, is leaving the Justice Department to focus on litigation surrounding the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Trump said Martin would work to ensure “Free, Fair, and Honest Elections.” Martin was a prominent supporter of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and helped raise money for January 6 defendants. Inside DOJ, he served as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, pardon attorney and head of the department’s “Weaponization Working Group.” He also participated in investigations of Democratic officials including Adam Schiff and Letitia James.

 

Martin will now be openly acting in the political/election arena rather than simultaneously exercising federal prosecutorial authority. But his new role is worth watching because Trump is mounting multiple efforts to alter election administration—mail voting, voter-roll access and federal monitoring—while one of his most aggressive legal allies now focuses full-time on election litigation. https://apnews.com/article/ed-martin-trump-justice-department-midterms-c309054c26313f403912cc01a1277b0f

 

ICE Putting on Gloves to be more “Hands On”. ICE is planning to spend $10 million–$20 million on gloves capable of delivering electric shocks through direct skin contact. The “pain compliance” gloves are activated by an officer and intended to cause enough pain to compel compliance. Again, cruelty is the point.

The manufacturer warns against using the device on children, pregnant people, the elderly, and severely disabled people, and says it should not be used for punishment or mere verbal defiance. A pending wrongful-death suit alleges jailers used the gloves 27 times on one man—including shocks far longer than manufacturer recommendations—before his death; the suit’s allegations have not been adjudicated. It used to be that “taking the gloves off” had negative connotations. Now we’re set to reverse that.

 

DHS says any technology ICE uses will be reviewed for compliance with law-enforcement standards. The constitutional issue will ultimately be the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable force. A device isn’t unconstitutional simply because it causes pain, but widespread deployment to immigration officers would make training, documentation and strict limits unusually important. I’m waiting for the spin ads to show ICE agent gloves along with Michael Jackson clips. https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/us/ice-electrical-shock-gloves-agents-hnk

 

Canada Dry. Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a powerful speech to Canadians on Saturday morning, hours after ordering negotiators to suspend U.S. trade talks despite Trump’s punishing tariffs. The morning after he pulled negotiators from trade talks in Washington and set off a new round of American tariffs, Prime Minister Mark Carney called the U.S. proposal “a bad deal” and said Canada was “at war” with the United States. “We’ve recognized from the start that America has changed,” he said in an address to Canadians on Saturday. “We recognize that sometimes, its signature is written in pencil.” It’s a sad day when Canada, Canada for Pete’s sake, has to acknowledge that our word is no longer worth spit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/world/canada/carney-tariffs-trade-trump.html Carney says new Canadian tariffs will start on September 8. https://ground.news/article/carney-says-new-canadian-tariffs-on-us-goods-will-come-into-effect-on-september-8_daf9c8

 

 

Prince Harry and Meghan Do-Over. Headed back to England. As Bill Maher said, “Wow. ICE isn’t fucking around.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/us/meghan-harry-hollywood-uk-move.html

 

Trump posted an online attack on three right-wing “Losers”. His post: “Tucker Carlson met with Lightweight ‘Former’ Congressman, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene, LOSERS ALL! Tucker’s ‘Views’ have fallen through the floor, and will only get worse. Nobody cares about him any longer in that he has become totally irrelevant, and happens to be, surprisingly, a very Low I.Q. individual.” He told followers that Carlson “could barely get out of College, and maybe he didn’t, but only really dumb people can’t make it through that wonderful four year time in life.” “Tucker wants to run for political office, but he should be required to take a cognitive test. He’s got no chance, but could probably take a couple of points away from whatever the Republican ticket happens to be! Tucker is a loser, and always has been!” Trump continued.

 

Trump then moved on to Greene, who broke with Trump over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files and the war in Iran. He called Greene, 52, a “highly neurotic young woman who went from Ultra Conservative to a Liberal ‘Fool,’ all in a matter of weeks.”

 

MTG responded to Trump in a lengthy post of her own on Saturday, taking a dig at his sinking poll numbers and expressing regret over ever having supported him. “President Trump’s demeanor, name calling, absurd and reckless rhetoric is unbecoming of the office of the president, is a bad example of leadership, and is hurting America’s reputation and place in the world,” she wrote. “At this point, he’s no different than an internet troll or one of the many millions of bots that say awful horrible things.” At least the verbal circular firing squad is spending some of their energy not blasting at trans folks or women or minorities. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-late-night-attack-tucker-carlson-thomas-massie-mtg_n_6a89ac3ae4b02b0e9648549d

 

 

What’s the Beef? And where? President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has struck a deal to flood the U.S. market with hundreds of thousands of metric tons of foreign ground beef at prices dramatically below the current market. (American cattle ranchers are going to love this.) But when a reporter asked the most basic question about the arrangement — where exactly is all this beef coming from? — Trump refused to say. “On the beef deal, which countries did you make the deal with?” a reporter asked Trump Friday afternoon. “I don’t want to say,” Trump responded. Welcome to Camp Trump and mystery meat. It’s what’s for dinner. The other dark meat. https://meidasnews.com/news/mystery-meat-trump-refuses-to-say-where-his-new-flood-of-foreign-beef-is-coming-from

 

“You Can’t Go Home Again” Men from Cuba and other countries describe being deported by the U.S. to the Central African Republic. “We cannot leave, we don’t have documents and we’re suffering and missing our families, in a continent we don’t know,” Moreno de Armas told CBS News. Again, the cruelty is the point. ”Meet ICE, Your New Travel Agent” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/central-african-republic-third-country-deportations/

 

 

The ragged edge of the future keeps moving forward. In what would have been at home in science fiction in the past, SpaceX just completed its 100th orbital mission. Of the year. https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/08/21/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-100th-orbital-mission-of-2026/

 

Today in History.

 

On this day in 1642, the English Civil War began between Royalists and Parliamentarians. As they say in politics and elsewhere, It’s always something.

 

And on this date in 1775, King George III proclaimed the American colonies to be in open rebellion and ordered his officials to suppress them. And we all know the rest of story. In 2026, Trump said something very similar about Americans. And about Iran.

 

Today’s quote: “Come see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I’m being repressed.”

 

Good News:

 

Polls. A new national Emerson College poll has Democrats ahead 50%–42% on the generic congressional ballot, an 8-point advantage among likely voters. Trump’s approval in the same poll is only 40% approve to 52% disapprove. https://emersoncollegepolling.com/august-2026-national-poll/

 

More polls. Perhaps more striking is the continuing special-election overperformance. Across 42 contested state legislative special elections this year, Democrats have run a median 10.4 percentage points ahead of the 2024 presidential baseline; turnout-weighted, the Democratic overperformance is 12.6 points. Special elections aren’t a perfect midterm predictor, but that’s a large and persistent signal rather than a single favorable poll. With continued luck we might be able to make it feel like a ten-foot poll. https://www.multistate.us/elections/special-elections-2026

 

Republicans are preparing for the possibility of losing the House. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is preparing for Democratic investigations and subpoenas should Democrats take control, while House Democrats are already planning possible investigations involving Epstein, administration immigration actions, Trump’s business interests and other matters. That’s obviously not an election result, but it tells you that both sides regard a Democratic House majority as sufficiently plausible to prepare seriously for it. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/democrats-trump-allies-investigation-plans-c226c1fc

 

This is John Stith, covering for Connie Willis for August 21, 22, 23.

As Connie says, keep calm and carry on,