Dear Everybody:
The big news today is new information regarding Trump’s USPS mail-in ballots attempt to rig the election:
–A little background: Two different judges put a hold on the scheme, then the Supreme Court ruled that the holds were premature because no one had been actually harmed by it yet because there was no final rule in place, so the judges had to remove the holds, then the USPS and Trump went full speed ahead to finalize the rule, a bunch of state election officials and AGs filed suit–again–and now the hold’s back on, but only for 14 days, after which there will be another hearing. And in the meantime, a number of states are already sending out ballots.
–The ruling says that mail-in ballots can only be sent out to states which have concurred with Trump’s and the USPS’s demands. r voter lists and regulation envelopes. Under the ruling, the USPS is required to send mail ballots only to voters on a list compiled by the Immigration and the Social Security Administration.
–As justification for the plan, they compared mail-in ballots to cremated remains and replica explosives as needing “special handling.” (What???)
–Today a USPS whistleblower came forward and said the scheme is even more nefarious than previously thought. He charged Trump and the USPS with implementing a “secretive, rushed” system that would give the agency unprecedented control over verifying voter eligibility.
–The USPS says it will only send ballots for states that got approval for the design of their envelope and submitted a list of voters receiving them through a special online portal. The online portal is still not active.
–The whistleblower says the planning for this has been sloppy and rushed and has not undergone any testing.
–The way it’s set up, there’s a zero percent rule. That means any error in any mail ballots sent out could result in all being discarded. A single scanning error in a batch of tens of thousands of ballot envelopes could prevent any of them from reaching voters.
–The whistleblower said they have designed a system to disenfranchise millions of voters.
–The whistleblower sent his report to Dem Senator Richard Blumenthal, who just made it public.
–There are two reasons Trump is determined to shut down voting by mail: 1) far more Democrats than Republicans vote by mail, and 2) there is a paper trail that can’t be tampered with for voting by mail. Many states have voting machines for in-person voting that have no paper trail.
–Some states, like Colorado and Oregon, do all their voting by mail, and this would completely shut that down.
–The whistleblower says this is all illegal. State AGs should be charging the US Postmaster General and every USPS employee with state election interference charges.
–Governor Gavin Newsom demanded that Trump officials face prison time following the release of the report. Newsom: “Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy.”
–The House Oversight Committee described Trump’s “attack on vote-by-mail” as “alarming” and “much more serious than previously known. This is an unconstitutional and dangerous power grab and must be permanently and immediately blocked. We are fighting in the courts to protect the right to vote. We will have more to come on this serious and illegal attack on our vote by mail system.”
–The case is currently on hold, the law is on our side (the President and the executive branch are not allowed to have anything to do with elections), and there is a good chance that by the time the judge actually decides this, they will declare that it is too close to the midterms for it to be allowed. –However, Democratic leaders and election officials are telling people to check to see if their ballot has been sent out and, if it’s not, go to the election office and get one, and then if you do get a mail-in ballot, fill it out and take it to a drop box or the elections office yourself. Don’t mail it.
But not all the voting news is bad:
–In Wyoming, one of only three states in which Trump has a positive rating, the Republican governor is furious that Trump sent his thugs to monitor poll workers and voters in the primaries in the state. Governor Matt Gordon said that the DOJ monitors Trump sent to “watch” the primaries were overly aggressive. He called their behavior “irregular.” The monitoring happened in Laramie County, which contains Cheyenne.
–The DOJ monitors demanded to interview voters. The elections officials said they didn’t allow interviews to be conducted in polling places and denied the monitors permission to do so. The DOJ monitors also questioned the training of the poll workers, requested training guides, and wanted to examine the voting machines.
–Wyoming law allows only election observation by certified poll watchers who monitor registration and turnout.
Governor Gordon: “I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns. I don’t like that. I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes either.”
–He called for an investigation into their behavior. (Really good idea to alienate one of your few remaining friendly states, Trump.)
–In another sign that Wyoming’s unhappy with Trump’s interference, GOP voters nominated Robert Short for chief elections official, beating out a bunch of candidates who wanted increased voter restrictions and mail-in voter regulation. Short thinks that voting reforms should focus on making voting more accessible and inclusive.
The second big story today is that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll abruptly resigned:
–He had been seen as a replacement for Hegseth at the Pentagon and had been very well liked and respected. According to reports, he resigned because he got fed up with dealing with Hegseth.
–The White House has been talking about getting rid of Hegseth, but they are afraid they won’t be able to get another Secretary of Defense confirmed.
–Most of the White House staff hate Hegseth, but Trump likes him because he’s “good on TV.” (With Trump it’s always all about “central casting.”)
–This is not the first major person to step down from the Pentagon. Navy Secretary John Phelan stepped down, General Christopher Donahue stepped down, and Hegseth fired General Randy George.
–Dem Sen Jack Reed: “Secretary Hegseth is cultivating a culture where dissent is punished and competence is secondary to personal allegiance.”
–Charlotte Clymer reported that Hegseth has either fired or forced into early retirement several admirals and generals whom he considered insufficiently loyal in what appears to be “an ongoing, blatant campaign of intimidation to keep senior brass in the Pentagon toeing the line and not pushing back against administration officials.”
–But it’s not working. Four generals have written “non-concur” statements on the record, saying they disagree with Hegseth’s decisions about Iran and stating that his current plans are “unsustainable.”
In RFK, Jr. news:
–The list of foods that are contaminated just keeps getting longer. Now there are eggs being recalled for salmonella and so is jasmine rice to be added to the lettuce, frozen blueberries, popsicles, alfalfa sprouts, buffalo chicken, pistachio butter, guacamole, and IV drugs which are being recalled.
–There are currently 17,000 people with food illnesses in the US and an additional 11,000 under investigation.
–What RFK, Jr. seems most concerned about, though, is whether he gets to stand right next to Trump in the Oval Office. During a recent press conference, he kept trying to push past Dr. Oz to get closer than him to Trump, and Dr. Oz kept pushing him away. (How old ARE these people?)
–And in case you think Dr. Oz is more sane than RFK, Jr., here’s what he had to say at that meeting: “If we could just get the average American to feel so healthy, so with it, so vibrant that they want to work just one extra year, that’s worth $1 trillion dollars to our GDP every year.” (So they don’t want us healthy so we’ll have better lies. They want us healthy so they can get more work out of us.)
–The whole Trump administration is busily trying to rewrite the history of COVID. Peter Navarro: “COVID NOT THAT INFECTIONS.” He claimed that the 1 million Americans who died all had co-morbidities and died from them, not from COVID.
–When Navarro spoke the other day, he had big placards behind him that read, “FAUCI MUST ROT IN PRISON.”
–And a historical reminder. Today in 1865 Dr. Joseph Lister performed the first antiseptic surgery on a leg with a compound fracture. These surgeries frequently resulted in gangrene due to the unsanitary conditions of the hospital. Lister had everyone wear gloves, every surface in the operating theater was sprayed with a solution of carbolic acid, and the patient’s surgical area was repeatedly swabbed with cloths soaked in carbolic acid. The patient did NOT develop gangrene.
–His methods were ridiculed at the time, including by the medical association, but Lister’s results finally convinced the entire medical community–except for RFK, Jr., who doesn’t believe in germs (no, I am not making this up–he believes in the miasma theory) and Pete Hegseth, who brags he hasn’t washed his hands in ten years.
In Mitch McConnell news:
–As I said yesterday, Republicans expect Mitch to return to the Senate to vote on the farm bill in September, a vote which is otherwise tied.
–Beth F: “What’s interesting–nobody ever saw him moved. Not into the hospital. Not out of the hospital. Not into rehab. Not out of rehab. And nobody saw him moved back into his house. The last anyone saw of him were his toes sticking out of the back of the ambulance. Explain to me how a city as big and busy as DC and cameras on every corner, no one ever saw him moved in and out of places.”
In science news:
–You’ve got to see this giant iridescent blue clam, found in Raja Ampat of New Guinea: https://marty-essen.com/2026/08/giant-clam/
In historical news:
–87 years ago today Hitler invaded Poland and started World War II.
–The night before, he had launched a false flag attack on the radio station in Gleiwitz in Germany by German SS officers wearing Polish uniforms. They attacked and seized the radio station and then sent a short anti-German message in Polish.
–To make the attack look more convincing, the day before, the Gestapo arrested a German farmer known for sympathizing with the Poles, injected him with drugs to render him unconscious and dressed him to look like a saboteur, then shot him and left him for dead at the scene so it looked like he was killed attacking the station.
–They also drugged several prisoners from Dachau concentration camp, dressed them in Polish uniforms, shot them dead on the site, and disfigured their faces to make identification impossible. The Germans referred to them by the code phrase “Konserve” or “canned goods.” (Note: This operation and the name they gave the people they brutally killed to carry out the operation tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the Nazis.)
–The next morning, Hitler used the so-called attack on German territory to justify his invasion of Poland and attacked with the Luftwaffe, tanks, and a full blitzkrieg operation.
In other news:
–Trump invited Russia to the G20 meeting in Asheville, but it’s not going that well. The other leaders are all very upset at Russia’s presence and are refusing to have their photos taken with the Russian delegates.
–LIV Golf (the group founded by the Saudis and Trump to compete with the PGA Tour, is headed for bankruptcy.
–MAGA is telling everyone Alberta is going to secede from Canada and become the 51st state. Alberta says absolutely not.
In good news:
–A federal judge sided with US Attorney Letitia James over Elon Musk’s twitter, concluding that state law requiring Twitter to disclose its content moderation policies does not violate the First Amendment.
–A Texas mother, Laura Berlin, has made a list of companies that make money off ICE, chartering planes, running detention centers, paying security guards, etc., and she has published it online so people can boycott those companies.
–In Newfoundland, baby puffins (called pufflings–isn’t that darling?) sometimes get disoriented by the lights of towns and cars and fly inland instead of out to sea. So volunteers have formed the Puffin Patrol to capture the babies, take them to the beach, and point them in the right direction.
Best meme of the day: “If your vote did not count, Trump would not be interfering with the midterms. Get out and vote in November.”
Best comment of the day, from Daily Kos: “We are just sixty days out from the midterm elections, and I can feel the energy shifting like a rushing incoming tide. And that energy is blue wave energy.”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
