Election Officials Gird For Unprecedented Federal Interference in the Midterms

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Preparing for the Unthinkable

President Trump’s concerted assault on free and fair elections is happening on so many fronts that it’s hard for a casual observer to keep track of it all, so I want to pull back briefly and offer a lens through which to assess the threat: election officials on the ground.

Even as the Trump election executive order — in the form of the new USPS rules for mail-in ballots — is winding its way to the Supreme Court for a second time in a week, election officials are up against the clock. Election Day is less than eight weeks out, but in the modern world of early voting and mail-in ballots the election has already started or will soon get underway in many states. So most of the preparation and planning was completed long ago to meet various legal and internal deadlines. That’s a key bit of context as the Trump administration and friendly judges try to change the rules of the game this late in the calendar.

But the current spate of last-minute legal challenges are orderly and tame in comparison to some of the scenarios election officials are preparing for, namely direct federal interference in an ongoing election.

Election officials have elevated federal interference in the midterms to a risk factor on par with a natural disaster, Mary Ellen Klas reports at Bloomberg:

State elections officials are moving forward with plans to mail out ballots as if nothing has changed. But they’re also developing contingency plans — the way they do to prepare for bomb threats, power outages and natural disasters. “There’s a new hazard on the list, and that is the possibility of some sort of federal interference,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told me last week.

Federal interference can take many forms, but after the FBI seized 2020 voting materials this year in Arizona and Georgia, election officials are preparing for direct election interference from law enforcement, NPR reports:

One state election official, who did not have permission to speak publicly, told NPR their office has led three separate statewide trainings this year to prepare for the possibility of law enforcement seeking to take possession of ballots or election materials while the election is ongoing.

Given these manifest risks, The Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law put out this morning a new white paper for judges: “A Judicial Guide to Search Warrants Seeking Election Materials.” It warns of the perils of breaking the chain of custody if law enforcement seizes ballots and other election materials and offers judges alternatives that minimize the risk of irreparable harm to elections.

Election officials face a nearly impossible-to-reconcile duality: preparing for the possibility of an unprecedented federal assault on state-run elections while reassuring voters that their votes will count.

The Missouri Map Mess

If you’re trying to make sense of the latest developments in the Missouri redistricting saga, I’d recommend:

• TPM’s John Light: Dueling Missouri Court Decisions Give Us a Preview of the Kind of Midterm We’re in For
• Law Dork’s Chris Geidner: Dueling rulings cause chaos over Missouri maps

Overnight, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) to show cause for why he could not be held in contempt of court for announcing that he would use the congressional district map the court deemed invalid. It set oral arguments for Thursday morning.

Census Chicanery Continues

• The Trump administration issued its proposed changes to the Census Wednesday, including an unprecedented exclusion of non-U.S. citizens from the count despite the 14th Amendment’s instruction that the “whole number of persons in each state” must be counted, NPR reports. The change, if allowed, would profoundly shift the balance of political power in America.
• More from TPM: Trump Admin Officially Moves to Reshape National Political Power With New Changes to 2030 Census

• Wired has identified the authors of last month’s bogus Census Bureau report on noncitizen voting in the 2020 election:
  • Dan Sweeney, a deputy general counsel at the Department of Commerce who previously worked as the “DOGE legal liaison and deregulatory attorney” at EPA;
  • Michael Lachanski, a new Census Bureau hire who was until recently a fellow at the MAGA-fied Claremont Institute;
  • Matthew Jensen and Jeff McCrea, staffers at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute

Judge Deplores Trump DOJ Conduct

The Trump DOJ’s litigation strategy in a key wrongful deportation case was “not reasonable,” U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Maryland ruled Tuesday as she ordered the government to pay more than $160,000 in attorney fees:

Looking at the totality of the circumstances, even if portions of the government’s positions might have been reasonable, its overall litigation position has not been substantially justified. A reasonable person could not find that the government’s overall litigation position had reasonable basis in law and in fact.

The attorney fees award was tied to litigation over the wrongful deportation of a Venezuelan national named “Cristian” to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act last year in violation of a court-approved settlement agreement.

The wrongful deportation of Cristian was just one of numerous other violations of the settlement agreement by the Trump administration that have emerged in the J.O.P. case. Judge Gallagher had already found the administration in contempt of court even before yet another wrongful deportation came to light last week.

It’s one of the perverse ironies of the Trump II presidency that taxpayers must foot the bill for the lawlessness of the Trump DOJ.

CBP Is Using ‘Predictive Policing’

“Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching,” 404 Media reports.

DHS to Flip Eagle to Show It’s at War

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin wants to change the department’s seal so that the eagle is facing the arrows in its left talons instead of the olive branch in its right talons. “We’re actually changing our seal to make it look towards the arrows because … when it looks towards the arrows is when it means we’re at war,” Mullin told Fox News.

A Shift in Lawless Boat Strike Campaign?

A Labor Day weekend operation by the U.S. Southern Command near Ecuador may have signaled a shift in approach. U.S. forces destroyed several commercial vessels believed to be used to refuel drug-smuggling boats but only after the boats were intercepted and their crews safely removed without any deaths or injuries. It was the fourth such interdiction of floating refueling platforms.

Illegal and Unproductive

Three retired Coast Guard officers, deploring the Trump administration’s lawless campaign against alleged drug smuggling boats on the high seas:

This policy is legally unsound, strategically counterproductive, and morally corrosive. It weakens the international partnerships that have underpinned successful maritime drug interdiction for decades while placing American servicemembers in the impossible position of carrying out actions that may conflict with the law and their own personal and professional ethics. Drug smugglers are criminals—not enemy combatants—and treating them as military targets undermines both the rule of law and America’s credibility abroad.

Jeffrey Epstein Watch

The Trump DOJ is refusing to cooperate with European law enforcement agencies investigating Jeffrey Epstein, the WaPo reports: “Several European law enforcement officials said in interviews that DOJ has not responded to their requests for mutual legal assistance, which could permit foreign investigators to obtain evidence, information and testimony from the U.S.”

EU Catches Canada On the Rebound

With U.S.-Canadian relations in tatters, the European Union and Canada are “working toward a new, all-encompassing relationship that will range from trade to security” in a new alliance that will stop just short of EU membership, Bloomberg reports.

Anthropic Researcher Quits Over AI Fears

WSJ: “Jacob Coxon, a researcher who specializes in training new AI models by having them consume vast amounts of data, said Tuesday that he is leaving the company because he doesn’t want to participate in an industrywide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves, worried such systems could spiral out of control and destroy humanity.”

I don’t recall the phrase “destroy humanity” being used in a straight news story since the end of the Cold War.

Quote of the Day

“Fortunately Americans had the wisdom to elect a corrupt dullard who’s susceptible to sycophancy and surrounds himself with sycophants to resolve the Sycophantic, Amoral Robot conundrum that poses existential risk to humanity.”—Brian Beutler

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