The Blockade Brief — August 5, 2026

Trump is demanding John Thune cancel the Senate's August recess and kill the filibuster to force through the SAVE Act, a bill built entirely on a fantasy. DHS claimed 250,000 “noncitizen voters” were on the rolls in four states. It never produced a shred of proof, and this week even the government's own internal review couldn't back it up. Experts have called the administration's work wildly unreliable guesswork, with a track record of erroneously flagging actual U.S. citizens. And Thune admits the votes for the SAVE Act aren't there anyway. Meanwhile, Trump's DOJ lost its 20th straight case trying to seize state voter data, dismissed with prejudice in Colorado. Not one court has sided with him.

Trump ordered Missouri Republicans to redraw the state's congressional map specifically to knock Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver out of Congress, and Republicans rammed it through in a special session last year. More than 300,000 Missourians signed a referendum petition to put that gerrymander to a statewide vote. On Tuesday, hours before polls closed, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins killed it, declaring the entire referendum unconstitutional and refusing to even say whether organizers had enough valid signatures. People Not Politicians sued within hours, and Missouri's Supreme Court said that if the referendum qualifies, the gerrymandered map gets thrown out retroactively — meaning Tuesday's primary may have been run on a map that should never have counted.