U.S. Postal Service Bends the Knee to Trump on Vote by Mail

In an already alarming moment for voting rights, the U.S. Postal Service wants to make things so much worse.

In response to a March executive order by President Donald Trump—which directed USPS to only provide mail-in ballots to voters on a federal list—the theoretically nonpartisan postal service is planning to implement a new rule forcing states to provide the Trump administration with a list of anyone who has requested an absentee or mail-in ballot. If the states refuse, their citizens wouldn’t receive their ballots.

Postmaster General David Steiner made the admission in a Senate hearing on Wednesday following questioning from Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

“If a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal?” Peters asked.

“Under our proposed regulation, no,” Steiner replied.

“This is basically a back-door way for the federal government to get voting information that states control under the U.S. Constitution,” Peters said later. “You’re telling the states, ‘Give the federal government this information—trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration, we’ll take good care of these—and if you don’t do it, you can’t mail absentee ballots.’”

Senator Margaret Hassan, another Democrat, said the USPS should “immediately” bin the new rule, labeling it “blatantly illegal.” Many postal workers have similarly spoken out against the idea, according to Democracy Docket.

Thankfully, the new rule can still be blocked in courts, and multiple lawsuits have been filed in order to do so. One Massachusetts lawsuit was allowed to proceed last week, after District Judge Indira Talwani stated the rule would hurt states’ constitutional right to run elections.

Steiner said the USPS would abide by whatever the courts rule. But it’s frightening to see, after years of trying to meddle with elections, that MAGA still isn’t done.

Soldiers wounded in the deadliest attack of the war on Iran have accused the Pentagon of minimizing their injuries, according to CBS News.

Chief Warrant Officer Rodney Bearman and Sergeant First Class Cory Hicks were both pierced with multiple pieces of shrapnel from the March 1 Iranian drone strike on their work station in Kuwait. Medical records show Bearman suffered a concussion, hearing and vision loss, and damage to his lungs. The Army has classified his condition as “not seriously injured,” even though he needed serious medical attention and days in the hospital.

Hicks suffered a traumatic brain injury, and his injuries were also listed as “minor,” even though he required multiple surgeries.

“That assessment is unacceptable,” Bearman’s wife, Amy, told CBS. “They told me that my husband’s injuries were classified as NSI, and they described that, or they defined that, as ‘not seriously injured.’ … He was treated and released back to duty.

“I could just hear him breathing and then he finally said, ‘I’m going to be OK.’ I waited a few moments and then asked if he returned to duty. It seemed like forever before he answered me, and then he said, ‘I can’t go back.’”

Doctors preferred that Bearman stay in the Kuwaiti hospital for a longer period of time, but that was denied by the Pentagon for “security concerns.” Being “cleared for duty” in this case means being cleared to begin recovering from injuries outside of a hospital, not that a soldier is prepared to return to active duty. Bearman returned to the U.S. on March 18 with shrapnel still in his body.

Hicks required multiple emergency surgeries in a Kuwaiti hospital after the strike. Even still, the Pentagon classified his injuries as “minor.”

“They said your husband was injured, he has a minor jaw injury, and he’s going to be returned to duty,” Hicks said his wife was told. Hicks told CBS News that he “absolutely” thinks the Pentagon has been downplaying the impact of the attack.

Hicks was still in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland at the time of this writing, almost four months after the attack, with a “pretty severe” traumatic brain injury. That is in no way minor.

The Army defended its classifications of Bearman and Hicks, saying that only someone at the risk of dying within 72 hours qualifies for a “seriously injured” or “very seriously injured” designation.

“The care and well-being of our Soldiers is of the highest priority. Any assertion that the Army seeks to downplay a soldier’s injuries is simply not true,” an Army spokesperson told CBS in a statement.

“Our hope for the investigation is that an honest assessment by the Army will prevent this from happening again to other service members,” Amy Bearman said.

“Reprehensible from any administration,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X about the CBS report. “Truly beyond the pale from the President who faked ‘bone spurs’ to avoid serving and combat.”

Six soldiers were killed in the March 1 attack, and Bearman and Hicks were among 20 others wounded. The attack and the subsequent treatment of these soldiers’ injuries is even more bleak when considering that the military accomplished virtually nothing of the Trump administration’s stated mission: The president eventually capitulated on a memorandum of understanding that allows Iran to maintain its missile arsenal and nuclear power program.

A federal judge has killed most of President Donald Trump’s first executive order changing election rules.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper permanently banned the administration Wednesday from implementing most components of the president’s 2025 order, which required individuals to provide “documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” before they registered to vote. In addition to lifting that requirement, the ruling also bans the president from requiring all mail ballots to be received by Election Day, even if they were postmarked by then.

Under Trump’s order, states that refused to comply would have been punished by having their federal funding withheld.

The government had argued that Democratic challenges to Trump’s executive order were premature and therefore illegitimate since the changes had not yet been implemented—but the Boston-based judge wasn’t having it. Instead, she noted that Trump’s office had effectively violated the necessary separation of powers, as only states and Congress are permitted to regulate elections.

The Constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Casper wrote.

Trump officials responded quickly to Casper’s decision, hinting online that the ruling would be appealed.

“I hope the Chief Justice understands the path these rogue judges have charted for the judiciary,” deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote on X.

Meanwhile, Trump has worked overtime to force his unpopular election reform proposals through the legislature, throwing confirmation hearings and bipartisan bill signings to the wayside while demanding Republicans prioritize passing the SAVE America Act.

The backlash to the bill—which was introduced months ago on Capitol Hill—has been grave, so much so that it gummed up efforts to fund Homeland Security for several months. Republicans eventually had to bail on the package to end the congressional gridlock.

Since he lost the 2020 election, Trump and his allies have amped up their base over contrived claims of voter fraud, a statistical nonissue in U.S. elections. For instance, a statewide audit out of Georgia, the epicenter of Trump’s baseless theory, revealed in 2024 that just 20 non-citizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, just 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

This story has been updated.

Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper is calling for President Donald Trump to refund taxpayers out of his own pocket for the millions spent on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, HuffPost reports.

“For weeks, Americans have watched a national embarrassment unfold on the National Mall,” Hickenlooper wrote in a letter to the president obtained by HuffPost. “Under the guise of an ‘emergency,’ your Administration bypassed competitive bidding processes to rush a renovation of the iconic Reflecting Pool.… Today, the Reflecting Pool is a fluorescent green swamp of algae, and the expensive blue sealant is already peeling off the bottom in sheets.”

Though Trump blamed “vandals” for the pool’s problems, it’s more likely that shoddy workmanship is the issue: Trump rushed the painting of the pool so that it would be “American Flag Blue” by July 4, and awarded no-bid contracts worth millions of dollars—one to Greenwater Services, the ironically named company of a longtime Trump donor and Mar-a-Lago neighbor.

Even if mysterious assailants did take a knife to the reflecting pool’s peeling blue paint—something Trump has declined to provide any evidence of—that wouldn’t explain how the reflecting pool became a bright green, algae-filled swamp.

“This was not a result of vandalism, but your administration’s incompetence,” Hickenlooper wrote in his letter. “The bill for this fiasco should only belong to you, Mr. President.”

In order to fix what it broke, the administration is planning to spend even more money to re-drain the pool and conduct repairs. Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” is starting to sound a lot more literal.

Republicans can’t catch a break at the minute, and it’s all due to their mad, senile king.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed both the House and Senate with flying colors—catching members of his own party off guard.

The bill would create new homes and limit corporate investors’ ability to buy single-family residences. Members of the GOP have used it as an example of their concern for working people ahead of the November midterms.

The stage was quite literally set for the signing in the Capitol before Trump threw his hissy fit. With little over an hour before the public signing ceremony, the president said he wants to push through the SAVE Act, Republicans’ faulty voter ID bill, before doing anything about housing.

Republicans then rushed to remove the presidential seal from the podium, as Democrats began using the stage as a backdrop to highlight the president’s sudden flip-flop.

Following Trump’s public refusal, House Speaker Mike Johnson attempted some damage control in a press conference.

“The president, when we go through the details of the bill, he’s gonna understand that it’s a good product, and certainly something that fulfills his promises,” Johnson said.

The SAVE Act has passed in the House but does not currently have the votes to pass the Senate. Nor should it—the bill will make it tougher for anyone lacking a paper copy of their birth certificate or passport to vote.

“The SAVE Act will make it exceedingly and unacceptably difficult for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans, to be heard,” Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock told Politico. “If all the people in the election can’t be heard, who are eligible to vote, then that’s something other than democracy.”

“I don’t think the American public knows what is in store for them if [the SAVE ACT] passes,” Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono added. “Millions of people are going to need to re-register.”

Kyle Griffin of MS NOW said the legislation was “designed to help rig elections.”

Despite the president’s refusal to sign the housing bill, it could still become law in 10 days if Congress remains in session.