Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump is running out of time in his quest to limit voting by mail, as a judge holds up his plans, and election officials begin sending ballots to voters in two swing states and gear up to send them across the country. Nearly a third of voters used mail ballots in 2024, and last-minute changes to how they’re handled could lead to undelivered ballots and uncounted votes. Trump has long argued that mail ballots…

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Democracy Docket reports: A federal judge in Massachusetts barred the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Friday from advancing new mail voting restrictions that, if carried out, could leave vast numbers of people unable to cast a ballot by mail this fall. The decision is a massive win for access to the ballot, though the administration is all but certain to appeal. Issuing her ruling a day after a pivotal hearing in Boston, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said USPS’s rule, which…

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The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to immediately allow new restrictions on mail-in balloting, potentially setting up a major legal clash that could affect millions of voters for November’s midterm elections. The fight could possibly upend election procedures just as states begin to send out mail-in ballots in pivotal contests that will determine control of the U.S. House and Senate. Some communities in Wisconsin mailed ballots to voters this week, North Carolina is…

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The Guardian reports: Reform UK has suspended two senior officials after they were filmed in an undercover investigation appearing to plot to get around electoral laws on foreign donations. In a blow to Nigel Farage hours before his conference speech, the party said it had launched an investigation into the actions of James Orr, the party’s head of policy, and Dan Jukes, a senior aide to Farage, after the broadcast by Channel 4 News. Jukes and Orr were filmed by…

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Wired reports: In a bid to tackle alleged voter fraud, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to award a contract worth up to $5 million to a company that will create a massive national database of voters. ICE first detailed what the contract would entail in a document published last week. “The purpose of this acquisition is for the handling and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud…

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By Jen Fifield This story was originally published by ProPublica Top U.S. Postal Service officials tasked with issuing new regulations on mail voting expressed concerns in internal meetings about how the rules they were drafting could delay or block ballots from reaching large swaths of eligible voters for the upcoming midterms, but the rules moved forward anyway, ProPublica has learned. The revelations about the discussions, from someone familiar with the rulemaking process, come as a separate anonymous federal employee filed…

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The Intercept reports: Top military officers from a secretive command watched a speedboat cut through the waters of the Caribbean Sea, early last September. A plane above provided live video of the vessel and the 11 men on board. In the early morning hours, Adm. Frank Bradley sought the counsel of his top legal adviser, Col. Cara Hamaguchi. Then he ordered SEAL Team 6 operators to attack the packed boat. After the vessel exploded, two helpless survivors pulled themselves onto…

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The New York Times reports: A U.S. Postal Service official has alleged that the agency is moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement President Trump’s order exerting federal control over mail voting, despite a court order blocking those plans. The official filed a whistle-blower report, published on Tuesday morning by the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, asserting that the “risky and haphazard” implementation of Mr. Trump’s order could lead to a “catastrophic failure” in the…

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The Associated Press reports: Citing the importance of the First Amendment, a federal judge in California says the U.S. government is unconstitutionally silencing critics of Israel’s war in Gaza and others as part of the Trump administration ‘s quest to deport noncitizens who it says disrupted college campuses while expressing their views. Judge Noël Wise, in a ruling Friday, delivered a victory for The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which has said some international students were afraid…

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The Guardian reports: The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without judicial oversight. In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the government’s effort to obtain them, her lawyers said…

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The Washington Post reports: Senior U.S. officials intervened in an international criminal investigation into a Venezuelan businessman who was enlisted by the Trump administration to help assert control over Venezuela’s government and oil industries, according to two people familiar with the matter. The officials lobbied to resolve the case in Switzerland in a way that would avoid criminal charges and end travel restrictions against the Britain-based businessman, Alejandro Betancourt, and they have not acted on a Swiss arrest warrant against…

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