We Can’t Let Them Deny Our Sacred Right

A brave USPS staffer just blew the whistle on the Trump regime’s corrupt, covert effort to suppress mail-in votes—and the people’s will

Checking mail-in ballots in 2024. (Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

A patriotic U.S. Postal Service official blew the whistle on Tuesday over “grave concerns” on a “secretive, rushed,” “risky and haphazard” effort by the federal government to take over state-run elections and mail-in voting before the midterms. This led to a hearing yesterday in Boston in which Judge Indira Talwani—who previously put in place a temporary restraining order until Sept. 10—worried about the rising chaos and probability of “major disenfranchisement” of voters. She promised to rule quickly on the broader legality.

The federal judge wondered why a major voting rule change could not wait until it could be carried out with care. “I think that’s what’s so puzzling to me about this case,” Talwani said, glossing over the obvious intention of the Trump regime and its years-long lies of election fraud.

Then, as of yesterday evening, Trump’s Solicitor General, D. John Sauer, whipped up yet another emergency filing. He is seeking to jump over the lower courts and get the extremist Supreme Court to allow the regime to bulldoze a path—kind of like tearing down the East Wing—for the postal service to prohibit delivering ballots in states that refused to share voter data with the federal government. And more: Sauer wants mail-in ballots that do not comply with Trump’s made-up standards to be thrown out.

Sauer’s gaslighting argument: Freezing the plan would impose “serious irreparable harm on the federal government, the states themselves, and the voting public.”

Uh-huh. Never mind the U.S. Constitution that puts the states in charge of managing elections, not the federal government.

This follows Donald Trump’s March executive order for the Homeland Security department to create a “state citizenship list” to control mail voting, as well as the hurried creation of an error-riddled computer system that could invalidate tens of thousands of ballots. In this system, if even one ballot in a bulk-mailed batch is improperly scanned, the whole batch would be thrown out.

It is insidious, anti-democratic and wrong to deny the will of the people this way. As much as the specifics of this dirty operation are new to us, the desire of Trump to suppress Americans' right to free expression at the ballot box.

Indeed, this latest coup links straight back to Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump incited an insurrection and tried to stay in power rather than acknowledge the elections results and commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

In our ongoing effort to comprehend and confront the daily acts of destruction by the Trump regime during this second term, we sometimes miss the profundity of individual attacks on our system and people. But this latest effort strikes me as a sickeningly vivid illustration that America is being led by a traitor who despises our Constitution and betrays our most sacred rights as Americans.

It’s hard to overstate how mad it is that we have reached this point—how all the available evidence of Trump’s unfitness to serve and carry out the most basic duties of our highest office was not sufficient for voters to deny him. Now we must contend with a crook, a corrupt mob boss who’s exploiting his position to feed on the ruins of liberty. But as bad as all that is, what’s worse is he is putting at risk our most fundamental and valuable role as democratic citizens.

Are we really going to let him and his fellow haters end our 250-year-old American project? The answer has to be no.

We can take strength from the anonymous whistleblower’s heroism, filing a report through Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal group. “Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the postal official warned.

We can find reason for optimism in the quick response of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, to expose this effort that could cause “catastrophic failure” of the system and “derail the midterms.” Said the Connecticut senator before releasing the whistleblower’s findings, “This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework on casting ballots in this country clearly for political reasons."

We can also take encouragement from Judge Talwani, who pledged to quickly rule on this process. “We are 70 days from the election and I have nothing from the USPS about how this will happen,” she told the Justice Department lawyer representing the postal service.

I don’t know whether this Supreme Court will once again ignore its responsibility to the Constitution in order to serve Trump and secure him maximum, authoritarian power. Its track record does not bode well.

But I remain hopeful that massive turnout by an enraged electorate can override efforts to silence the people’s voice, even if a percentage of votes are denied before or after the election when Trump will surely dispute the outcome. That’s because I believe that an overwhelming majority are finally grasping the grave danger of letting a corrupt enemy of the people and his accomplices decide our fate.

As the midterms approach, it’s more important than ever to support the survival of democracy. I pledge to raise my voice as vividly and fiercely as I can. While most of my posts are free, for just $50 a year or $5 a month paid subscribers fully join our community: That means all access to our thoughtful comments sections, live forums, the whole archive and more.