This week, Trump openly admitted what voting rights advocates have long warned: His push to end vote by mail isn’t about election security but is meant to help Republicans maintain their grip on power.

Thursday, August 21

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This week, President Donald Trump openly admitted what voting rights advocates have long warned: His push to end vote by mail isn’t about election security but about keeping Republicans in power.

At the same time, GOP governors eager to prove their loyalty are sending thousands of National Guard troops into D.C., reinforcing Trump’s push to use the military as domestic policing.

Here’s what you need to know.

Thank you for reading, and as always, please reach out to me at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) with any of your thoughts or concerns.

Jacob Knutson, reporter

Trump gives up the game in unconstitutional bid to ban mail voting

- Trump in the Oval Office this week said he will soon issue a blatantly unconstitutional executive order as part of a bid to do away with mail voting. The goal, he suggested, is not to make elections more secure but to hurt his political opponents.

- “If you [end] mail in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected,” Trump claimed, adding that ending mail voting was “bigger than anything having to do with redistricting.”

- In essence, he said the quiet part out loud, clearly revealing the partisan motivations behind his push.

- Taken together, Trump’s attempt to kill off vote by mail, the GOP’s brazen mid-decade redistricting, the DOJ’s demands for state voting data and his allies’ calls to station federal police at polling places indicate that Republicans feel entitled to power and may use any means necessary to hold onto it - including ending fair elections

Jacob’s reporting gives readers the information they need to stay informed and take action. As an independent media outlet, we count on readers like you. Become a member and help fund our fearless reporting. ([link removed] )

GOP states pour National Guard troops into D.C.

- At least six Republican-led states have deployed over 1,200 of their own National Guard members to D.C., backing Trump’s hostile takeover of the city and his attempts to use the military in routine domestic law enforcement.

- Some of the governors deployed troops to D.C. even as violent crime rates in cities in their own states are higher than the district’s. This includes Mississippi’s own state capital, Jackson, which has led the nation in homicides for three years straight.

- With the state troops expected to arrive over the coming days, over 2,000 soldiers will soon be on the streets of D.C. That’s close to the amount of troops the U.S. deployed to Afghanistan in the three months after 9/11.

- As Liza Goitein, a Brennan Center expert, noted recently, if Trump’s efforts to use soldiers as civilian police are not stopped either by the courts, Congress or widespread public outrage, Americans could end up living under a police state.

Rep. McIver cites Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons in motion to dismiss federal impeding charge

- Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) said in recent court filings that the three-count charge of “forcibly impeding” officers against her should be dropped because the DOJ is selectively and vindictively prosecuting her.

- A grand jury indicted McIver after a chaotic confrontation between federal agents and elected officials outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark earlier this year.

- The congresswoman, who has pleaded not guilty, argued that the DOJ is demonstrating differential treatment by prosecuting her shortly after dropping cases against over 160 other defendants facing the same crime for their actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

- McIver is the first sitting member of Congress to be criminally prosecuted by the Trump administration and faces up to 17 years in prison if convicted. A judge set a tentative trial date for Nov. 10.

Democracy Docket is tracking the 65 most important Trump accountability lawsuits fighting the administration’s power grabs. Become a member to find out which ones have succeeded so far. ([link removed] )

Dive Deeper: ‘All smoke, no fire:’ Trump’s politically motivated investigations usually turn up bupkis

Like many of the overly political investigations launched during Trump’s first term, the numerous probes the DOJ has recently launched against the president’s political opponents likely will not lead to convictions. However, for Trump and his allies, convictions — the normal metric for prosecutorial success — likely are not the goal, Democracy Docket’s Jim Saksa reports.

- As applications of criminal justice, the DOJ’s probes will likely be failures. But they may succeed as exercises of populist demagoguery, dragging the targets’ names through the mud and providing grist for the online conspiracy theory mills.

- The investigations may also have a chilling effect on other officials who witness wrongdoing or attempt to challenge Trump’s actions. They may not speak out or act, fearing that if they do investigators will soon be knocking on their doors.

- As Corey Brettschneider, a political scientist at Brown University, told Democracy Docket, “A dictatorship functions not necessarily with actual attacks or prosecutions or imprisonment, but the threat of imprisonment.”

To do list

- Hundreds of anti-authoritarian demonstrations across the U.S. are set for Labor Day, Sept. 1.

Odds and ends

- Ed Martin’s latest stunt: Ed Martin, the former acting U.S. attorney for D.C. who now heads the DOJ’s “weaponization” task force, told New York Attorney General Letitia James to resign from office or face charges. Martin, who also posed for a photo outside James' home, is investigating James over bogus claims of mortgage fraud.

- “Little Trump” refers another Trump opponent to DOJ: Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte accused a Federal Reserve governor of mortgage fraud and referred her to the DOJ for criminal prosecution. It marked the third time Pulte has done so against an opponent of Trump’s or an official who has taken policy positions that are inconvenient for the president.

- Ousted DOJ attorney says Trump officials have corrupted antitrust law: Roger Alford, the former No. 2 official at the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, in a recent speech accused two senior aides to Attorney General Pam Bondi of promoting pay-to-play corruption in the department’s enforcement of antitrust law.

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Quote of the week

It’s been just over a week since Trump used out-of-control crime as a pretext to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to D.C., swarm the district with thousands of federal agents and attempt to assert control over its police department. Jamelle Bouie’s latest New York Times column succinctly summarizes what Trump is really up to in Washington:

This occupation has a different purpose and sends a different message. It tells the people of Washington — and of other, similar cities — that they’re less equal citizens under an elected government than subjects of a capricious ruler. It tells them that their freedom to live their lives free of harassment from masked federal agents is a function of their loyalty to that ruler. And it tells states that they can’t expect fair treatment from the White House.

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