Enveloping Confusion

This Week in Democracy

• As mail voting begins for the November elections, litigation is continuing around President Trump’s executive order targeting the practice. While a federal judge in Massachusetts is considering whether to extend an order blocking the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new restrictions on mail ballots for this year’s elections, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the restrictions to go into effect immediately.

  A federal whistleblower came forward, warning that the Postal Service’s development of a system to implement the restrictions has been “rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed,” and that the system risks disenfranchising voters.

  ➡️ MORE: Sharing the Facts About Trump’s Second Executive Order on Elections

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reassigned hundreds of agents from investigating serious crimes to instead comb through state voter registration lists in an attempt to find noncitizens registered to vote. There is no evidence to back up the president’s claims of widespread noncitizen voting, and so far, DHS’s investigation has produced scarce results.

  ➡️ MORE: What’s Breaking Through About False Claims of Noncitizen Voting

• Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there are no plans to send troops to polling places in November. Homeland Security Sec. Markwayne Mullin, though, said that federal immigration agents could be deployed to the polls to respond to “specific threats.”

  It is illegal under federal and state law for armed troops or agents to be at the polls. A February States United survey also showed that nearly half of Americans disagree that the president should be able to send ICE agents to the polls.

  ➡️ MORE: Americans Oppose ICE at Polling Places

• A federal judge in Maryland blocked Trump’s latest executive orders attempting to end birthright citizenship, citing the Supreme Court’s June ruling that struck down the president’s first attempt.

  ➡️ MORE: Sharing the Facts About Birthright Citizenship

State of the States

In California, Election Denier Tina Peters announced that she would not take an elections job in Shasta County. The county’s top election official previously said he planned to hire Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted of participating in a security breach of election equipment, as his deputy, drawing bipartisan criticism.

In Minnesota, a federal grand jury indicted an ICE agent for lying to investigators about the circumstances that led to him shooting into a house and hitting a man.

In May, the top prosecutor for the Minneapolis area filed state charges against the agent, Christian Castro. Castro was detained in Texas, but released last week after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declined to approve a request from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to extradite him. He has since turned himself in to federal authorities.

In New York, a federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the city of Rochester. The administration sued the city in April over its policies that limit the extent to which local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

“The City of Rochester remains committed to guaranteeing public safety for all, not being coerced into doing the federal government’s work of immigration enforcement,” Rochester Mayor Malik Evans said in a statement.