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The Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Election Edict

The extremist majority on the United States Supreme Court - I will not call them "conservative" because there is nothing conservative about their agenda - has done much to green light the Felon's corruption and lawlessness, including providing broad immunity from prosecution for acts done while in office thereby putting the Felon largely above the law.  Last night, thankfully, the Court rejected the Felon's plan to create chaos with mail-in ballots and in the process likely disenfranchise millions of citizens from voting in the 2026 mid-term elections,  The U.S. Constitution is clear that the states, NOT the federal government govern and handle elections, yet the Felon sought to indirectly take control of elections across the country to make sure millions likely would not have their vote counted. While the majority on the Court said no, Clarence Thomas - the dullard on the Court - and Samuel Alito (who I view as increasingly dangerous) were fine with large scale disenfranchisement. The most ridiculous thing about the Felon's efforts under the guise of preventing "election fraud" is rare and of late those caught engaged in election fraud are Republicans and members of MAGA.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the Court's ruling:

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor Donald Trump will stop the United States Postal Service from delivering mail-in ballots in the coming midterm elections. Tonight, the Supreme Court handed down an emergency ruling blocking the Trump administration from implementing a new policy that would have made mail-in voting so onerous as to be effectively impossible for election officials to administer. The Court’s decision spares those officials from pointless chaos—and voters from potentially widespread disenfranchisement.

In the United States, election administration is carried out by a patchwork of local officials working state by state across roughly 10,000 different jurisdictions. Usually, USPS’s role in elections is clear: The Postal Service transports mail ballots to voters from state and local election offices; if voters return their ballot by mail, USPS takes care of that too. . . . . The Trump administration looked at this system, which has been popular among voters, and decided to cause havoc by imposing new and arduous criteria for election officials to meet before USPS would commit to mailing ballots.

A number of states and several nonprofits, along with the Democratic Party, quickly brought legal challenges. Before the Court resolved the matter tonight, the cases zagged madly among district and appellate courts, then up to the Supreme Court and back down again. Many judges were skeptical both of the legal basis for the rule and of the speed at which the administration was attempting to implement it, with less than two months to go before the elections.

But despite this broad agreement in the lower courts, experts were uncertain how the Supreme Court would handle the case. The Court’s past friendliness toward even the most legally dubious of Trump’s policies cast into doubt whether the justices would stand against his efforts here, especially after the Court rejected an earlier iteration of the challenge on the grounds that it was premature. . . . . “In a normal world, there would be a zero percent chance” that the Court would allow the USPS rule to go into effect. Yet, he went on, “we don’t live in a normal world anymore.”

Our world is still not a normal one. But this time, a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court decided not to make it worse. In a terse, unsigned paragraph, the Court declared that the Trump administration had failed both to make its case on the law and to show that a ruling in Trump’s favor would not upend the upcoming elections.

That final part of his assessment is obviously correct. USPS’s plan would have required election officials to upload lists of eligible voters through a Postal Service “portal”—yet the government has given no indication that the portal is operational. USPS would also have required election officials to receive Postal Service approval for the design of their ballot envelopes, but officials have already printed their ballot envelopes and do not have the money or time to create new designs.

Election administrators prepare to send out ballots far in advance, and if the USPS rule had gone into effect, election officials might have found themselves unable to count on the Postal Service to mail ballots at all. However conservative the Supreme Court is, “there aren’t five votes for abject chaos,” Levitt wrote to me after the ruling.

Still, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the pair on the Court who most reliably tilt toward Trump, would have allowed the USPS plan to go forward. . . . . As for the last-minute dash to shake up the midterms, Alito manages to blame not the government but the plaintiffs, the lower courts, and even his own colleagues on the bench for the litigation that—he claims—delayed USPS from finalizing its rule.

In a blog post, the UCLA law professor and election scholar Rick Hasen deemed Alito’s dissent “disingenuous.” Among other things, USPS continued working on the rule during the course of the litigation over the summer. And even if the Postal Service had finished the planning process earlier in the summer, state and local jurisdictions still might not have had enough time to rework their envelopes to comply.

Fortunately, officials won’t need to scramble to submit envelope designs to USPS to be measured down to fractions of an inch, or upload voter names into a portal that doesn’t exist. Election workers will likely face plenty of challenges in the month and a half before the midterms. Mailing ballots, though, will not be among them.

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Trump Loses the Other Strait

The adverse impacts of the Felon's and Pete Hegseth's war of choice against Iran continue to multiply and it becomes increasingly clear to anyone not drinking the MAGA Kool-Aid that this war was extremely poorly planned and possible consequences never considered.  Now, the Houthis - Iranian allies - have more or less seized control of the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb and with the Iranians can hold a third of the world oil production hostage, pushing oil prices likely higher and leaving Saudi oil production more vulnerable. The potential for where the USA and by extension, the world, now finds itself should have been foreseen by anyone remotely competent, yet the Felon and his cheerleader Hegseth seemingly ignore anyone and everyone who had cautioned them against attacking Iran. With America's mid-term elections getting closer and closer, it is likely a safe bet that Iran and the Houthis will take actions to cause oil prices to soar and harm the Felon and Republican's political prospects. Again, ANYONE remotely competent should have foreseen the current mess, but not the Felon and his circle of sycophants.  A piece in The Atlantic look's at the Felon's self-created nightmare:

As recently as last week, the Iran war appeared to be turning slightly in America’s favor. The Houthis—the Yemen-based militia that is Iran’s most formidable remaining ally in the Middle East—were under pressure from their local rivals, and the Saudi air force was pounding them with air strikes. The president of Yemen’s internationally recognized government issued a triumphant statement declaring that the Houthis’ miscalculations “will open the door to their complete collapse.” With their Houthi partners wounded, Iran’s leaders would have one more reason to back down and agree to Donald Trump’s terms.

Yesterday morning, those delusions drifted away like smoke as Houthi forces broke through their enemies’ defenses and seized the towns and islands around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the most important maritime choke points in the world.

That loss leaves [the Felon] Trump, who had been hoping to win back control of the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, with a bitter surprise. His enemies now control both of the two important straits in the Middle East, through which a combined total of about a third of the world’s oil shipments pass every day.

It also underscores a stubborn fact: For all the setbacks suffered by Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” over the past year or two, its forces retain an ideological fervor and an esprit de corps that is sorely lacking on the other side. The Gulf states’ failure to work together against the Houthis has been catastrophic, and it echoes Trump’s own failure to devise a plausible or coordinated strategy against Iran.

Although the Houthis already had the ability to threaten shipping in the Red Sea, the capture of the Bab el-Mandeb “means you can literally sit on the coast and fire at passing ships,” April Longley Alley, a Yemen expert at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy and the former political adviser to the United Nations special envoy for Yemen, told me. “It makes it easier and cheaper, and it solidifies, from a military and political point of view, that they have a stranglehold on the strait.”

The United States might not be able to do much about this, even if the Pentagon launches a new round of air strikes on the Houthis. (The Saudi leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, called Trump twice yesterday urging him to strike the Houthis, Axios reported.) Bombs and missiles would achieve little without a ground force to take advantage of them, and America’s Yemeni allies are now battered and divided.

The Houthi advance is even worse news for Saudi Arabia. For many years, the Saudis have been struggling to tamp down the Houthi threat on its border. Now the Houthis have inherited a great deal of Saudi and Emirati supplies left behind by the official Yemeni government’s retreating forces.

The mess that Saudi Arabia faces in Yemen is partly of its own making. The Houthis were born three decades ago in reaction to Saudi meddling in Yemen’s religious and political sphere. In December, tensions between the Saudi and Emirati leadership led Riyadh to demand that the Emiratis—their nominal allies—withdraw from Yemen, leaving the Saudis in charge of a patchwork of militias with divided loyalties. . . . “There was no coordination between commanders, between the intelligence and the drones, between the coast guard and the army—nothing,” Farea Al-Muslimi, a Yemen specialist at the think tank Chatham House, told me.

The Houthis, meanwhile, were disciplined and focused. “They sacrificed hundreds if not thousands of fighters,” a member of Yemen’s officially recognized government, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions, told me. “Our bullshit activists were putting out fake news about victories, while the Houthis were working in silence.”

With the momentum on their side, the Houthis could now go on to seize more terrain in other parts of Yemen, including Marib province, where much of Yemen’s oil is located. They could also extend their power bloodlessly, by cutting deals with tribal and regional leaders in the south and east. All of this would further consolidate their power and strengthen their Iranian patrons.

[U]nlike their enemies, the Houthis and the Iranians have a deep ideological bond, one that their soldiers willingly die for. And the Houthis do not need to win every battle. As long as they can sink an occasional oil tanker, they will hold a whip hand over their Saudi neighbors, and over the rest of the world too.

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Gas Prices, Mortgage Rates and Inflation Expose the Felon's/GOP's Economic Lies

You know Republicans are desperate when their main response to Democrat candidates is to describe them all with a broad brush as being "communists." Yet that is where the Felon's failed policies of tariffs and trade wars with one time allies and the ongoing Iran war - a war that may yet further restrict oil flow from the Middle East as the Saudis shut down a major pipeline - have revealed the Felon's lies about how he would fix the economy on "day one."  Gas prices are high and likely headed higher, mortgage rates are up and slowing an already cooling housing market, and inflation and other interest rates are putting further strain on American consumers and families.  Locally, we see incumbent Jen Kiggans - who lies as much as the Felon - claiming she gave everyday Virginians tax cuts and laughably claiming she focuses on bipartisan legislative efforts.  The truth is that the tax cuts she voted for largely benefited the very wealthy and votes close to 100% with the Felon. Kiggans is emblematic of many other Republicans who sold their souls to the Felon and now are left telling lies to constituents in the hope they can save their political careers. At some point even MAGA Kool-Aid drinkers cannot ignore the rising cost of virtually everything. A piece in the New York Times looks at economic reality:

With less than two months until the midterm elections, [the Felon] President Trump commenced a final push this week to preserve his Republican majority in Congress, arguing that the United States under G.O.P. control had brought prices “way, way down.”

But for many families and businesses, the economy appeared to be on far shakier footing by Friday. Fuel prices soared, mortgage costs climbed and inflation registered uncomfortably high, testing the public’s patience with Mr. Trump’s frequent assurances that the country is on the right track.

The contrast underscored the political and economic stakes for [the Felon] Mr. Trump, who may soon face the wrath of an electorate long spurned by promises in Washington to lower the cost of living. As November draws closer, prices have risen under the president’s leadership, driven largely by an agenda that has included two years of punishing trade brinkmanship and a prolonged war with Iran.

The consequences were evident in the latest gauge of the Consumer Price Index, released on Friday. The report showed that prices rose at an annual pace of 3.4 percent in August, which increased the odds of the Federal Reserve’s raising interest rates next week.

The data came on the same day that a separate, long-running survey from the University of Michigan found that consumer sentiment dropped sharply this month. In that report, Americans expressed new worries that the economy was sputtering, and that inflation would continue to rise.

Over two days of speeches at his party’s midterm convention in Dallas, the president labored to convince Americans that Republicans had achieved “tremendous economic success.”

For [the Felon] Mr. Trump, the fight with inflation has proved so pernicious that it has overshadowed even the few bright spots in the economy. Despite nearly two years of policy tumult, the labor market has remained strong, the economy is growing and the country is witnessing a boom around artificial intelligence, one that has generally delighted financial markets.

But those positives have not always been obvious or tangible to voters, who have suffered through years of compounding costs that peaked during the coronavirus pandemic. Those financial strains continued into August, when prices rose faster than hourly wages on a year-over-year basis for the fifth straight month.

“The economy is performing well, but this isn’t buoying consumer attitudes,” . . . “Rather, they’re squarely focused on rising prices and interest rates eating into purchasing power.” In an interview, Mr. Klachkin added that he did not see inflation “coming down at a meaningful pace any time soon.” He cited a range of risks, including uncertainty around the tariffs in Mr. Trump’s trade war and the war with Iran.

Both of those conflicts worsened this week, a period that was not captured in the latest inflation report. But Americans still felt the consequences. The return to hostilities in Iran, for example, sent the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, to $110 per barrel briefly on Friday.

Nationally, gas averaged nearly $4.30 per gallon by Friday, according to AAA — well over a dollar more than a year ago. Still worse was the cost of diesel, which topped $6 per gallon, setting a record that could deeply affect shipping and transportation.

But there was no sign this week that the war with Iran was close to finished. Even [the Felon] Mr. Trump acknowledged at one point that high oil and gas prices could persist until “right after the election,” though he predicted costs would fall quickly, contrary to warnings from economists.

The renewed energy shock created more headaches for the Fed and its new chairman, Kevin M. Warsh. As the Fed eyes a rate increase to bring inflation into check, [the Felon] Mr. Trump has redoubled his demands for significant rate cuts. Absent a steep reduction, the president even threatened last week that he could cut off all trade with countries that sell more to the United States than they buy. Rates are now in a range of 3.25 to 3.75 percent.

On Wall Street, the economic headwinds also helped to push up the cost of the government’s own borrowing all week. That came in the form of higher yields, which topped 4.9 percent on 10-year bonds, the highest level seen since 2023.

The rise carried significant implications, particularly for homeowners, since mortgage rates closely track yields on those bonds. The average rate on a 30-year loan reached around 6.8 percent last week, according to Michael Fratantoni, the chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, a 15-month high.

At the start of the year, Mr. Trump had promised an aggressive plan to lower housing costs. Since then, a confluence of factors has sent mortgage rates skyrocketing, and led Mr. Fratantoni to predict on Friday that it could reach “at or above 7 percent” soon.

Add to that [the Felon's] Mr. Trump’s new sales pitch to voters, promising $5,000 to Americans if Republicans prevail in the midterms — a plan that Mr. Loper estimated could cost $1.2 trillion.

That price tag, on top of existing fiscal woes, would probably “lead to greater inflation and higher interest rates,” he said.

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