Election Interference Happening Now
News that the Trump DOJ is escalating its attack on state election officials first emerged, I believe, in Salt Lake City yesterday, where Utah’s top election official revealed yesterday that she’d received a threatening letter from the Civil Rights Division dated Sept. 4 warning that she is “under investigation.”
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson further revealed that it was her understanding that election officials in multiple states had received similar letters.
By this morning, the New York Times was reporting that the Trump DOJ had confirmed it had sent similar letters to election officials in 30 states.
The letter to Henderson, only a portion of which she posted online, reiterated previous demands that election officials preserve records for the prior 22 months.
“There’s only two reasons to send that letter: Either the lawyers who send it don’t understand litigation obligations, or they’re hoping that states will misinterpret it and retain more than they’re legally required,” David Becker, a former DOJ voting rights lawyer, told the NYT.
What makes the escalation especially remarkable is that they come after the Justice Department has repeatedly struck out in civil lawsuits trying to force states to cough up voter information. Having lost in court while trying to clear the lower bar of a civil lawsuit, the Trump DOJ is now going to meet the even higher standard of a criminal prosecution?
That disconnect is a tell that the real purpose of raising the specter of criminal prosecution is to intimidate election officials into doing the administration’s bidding — if not now, on the voting records dispute, then at some point later as Election Day draws near. It adds to the overall chaos that President Trump has intentionally ginned up for election officials around the running of the election.
“If you cared about the security of the elections … you would not be threatening election officials with prison sentences, you would not be suing all of us, you would not be investigating all of us constantly,” Henderson told the Salt Lake Tribune. “You would not be making it so that we’re not able to do our actual jobs.”
BREAKING: SCOTUS Does the Right Thing in Missouri
In the Missouri redistricting case, the Supreme Court has effectively restored Missouri’s old 2022 congressional map for the 2026 midterm elections. The high court blocked a district judge’s deeply flawed temporary restraining order that had created a standoff between the federal courts and the Missouri Supreme court.
TPM will be covering developments all day today:
TPM’s Kate Riga: Federal Judge Denies ‘Extraordinary Measure’ of Enjoining Missouri Supreme Court Ahead of Hoskins’ Contempt Hearing
TPM’s John Light: Missouri’s Republican-Imposed Catch-22, and the Ballad of Denny Hoskins
Stay tuned …
Trump Takes USA Scheme to SCOTUS
The Trump DOJ is asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that Sigal Chattah was unlawfully installed as the top federal prosecutor in Nevada.
The Trump scheme to bypass Senate confirmation and federal district judges to install loyalists in blue states has already been shot down by three appeals courts.
In Chattah’s case, when her statutory 120-day term as acting U.S. attorney ended, she was named first assistant U.S. attorney and then automatically elevated into the acting role again — which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected last month as unlawful. It ruled that only a first assistant U.S. attorney already in place when the vacancy happens automatically ascends into the acting role.
Setting aside the complicated statutory and constitutional mechanics, Trump’s goal is clear: He wants compliant loyalists in place as top federal prosecutors in blue states to extend the reach of DOJ as a retributive tool against Democratic elected officials.
Today in Not Normal
The sitting attorney general, Todd Blanche, spoke at President Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas last evening — marking another break in the tradition of insulating the Justice Department from partisan politics, especially in the run-up to elections.
Sure Gonna Miss Ed Martin
Trump DOJ official Ed Martin sent many more of his buffoonish “letters of inquiry after request” to scientific journals than previously known, a FOIA request has revealed.
It was already known that Martin had sent his peculiar letters to the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Chest, and Obstetrics & Gynecology baselessly accusing them of being partisan actors. But the FOIA request by FYI: Science Policy News revealed that eight other publications received Martin’s missives:
American Family Physician
American Journal of Public Health
Cancer
Family Medicine
Nature Medicine
Pediatrics
Science
Scientific American
Martin left the Justice Department last week and is launching a new gun rights group — Firearm Rights for Americans — focused on restoring access to firearms for people convicted of nonviolent crimes.
JUST IN …
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals today rejected the Trump administration’s unprecedented effort to detain millions of undocumented immigrants without bond, comparing it to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
It was the final appeals court to weigh in on the administration’s novel interpretation of a 30-year-old law. The final score: 11-2 against the administration. The Supreme Court is likely to weigh in next.
Lawless Boat Strike Campaign Kills 3
While the Pentagon has begun non-fatal strikes targeting larger vessels near Ecuador that allegedly refuel drug-smuggling boats, it is continuing its lawless campaign in the Caribbean, where three people were killed in a new strike on Wednesday.
The Summer of Our Discontent
A couple of new data points for the almanac of global warming:
August 2026 tied July 2023 for warmest month ever recorded planet-wide, according to Copernicus, the EU space program’s climate monitoring arm. Average temperatures worldwide in August were 1.65 degrees Celsius (roughly three degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The summer of 2026 was the warmest summer ever recorded in the contiguous United States, according to NOAA. It beat out the Dust Bowl summer of 1936 by 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
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So when do the state election officials realize that whatever they do now, the Trump DOJ ‘s coming after them anyway for every race in which Republican loses?
Finally, some good news from MM amongst the usual horrors of trumpism — Scotus held the line a second time against the corrupt MO Secretary of State's attempts to overthrow voters' will and a rollback of a grossly partisan redistricting map.