THE BLOCKADE BRIEF: September 16, 2026

THIS WEEK’S BLOCKADES

Supreme Court Deals Trump a 7-2 Defeat, Refuses to Let Him Gut Mail Voting Before the Midterms

On Monday, the Supreme Court delivered a 7-2 rebuke of Donald Trump’s plan to gut mail voting nationwide, refusing to reinstate USPS rules that would have rewritten mail ballot procedures for the 2026 midterms. Election officials breathed easier across the country: California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the state can finally get back to conducting elections "fairly, openly, for the people, by the people.” Trump spent months building a secret anti-voting system by executive fiat, and the nation’s highest court has finally shut him down.

Supreme Court Ends Missouri Republicans’ Yearlong Gerrymander Scheme For Good

Missouri Republicans spent a year manufacturing a “constitutional crisis” rather than accepting a map they fairly lost, and the Supreme Court just ended it. The justices again rejected Missouri Republicans’ bid to use Trump’s gerrymandered map, forcing Secretary of State Denny Hoskins to direct local election officials back to the state’s 2022 congressional lines. The saga included Justice Kavanaugh denying an emergency appeal, only for a Trump-appointed federal judge to try reviving the same map hours later, all in service of carving up Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City district so Republicans could grab a seat they cannot win fairly. Missouri voters now know which lines they’re voting under in November, no thanks to Trump.

Election Denier Jeff Van Drew Builds a Hearing on a Fantasy

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who voted to overturn the 2020 election and once paid his campaign’s turnout operative $65,500 while that operative ran an actual mail ballot fraud scheme, held a hearing this week built entirely on conspiracist fantasy. Trump claimed DHS identified 35,152 noncitizens on New Jersey’s voter rolls, but the state’s real disclosure was roughly 6,600 registrations tied to a corrected DMV clerical error, and Van Drew has never reconciled the two. He’s using the gap to push the anti-voting, so-called SAVE America Act, a bill even its own sponsor now admits “cannot take effect before November,” while a national survey found more than 21 million citizens lack the documents it would require.

MALLY SMITH, Try And Stop Us Spokesperson:

“Donald Trump lost his fight to gut mail voting, lost his fight to rig Missouri’s map, and now he’s reduced to backing a congressman peddling a fake number to sell a bill his own party admits can’t work in time. Courts keep shutting him down over and over, but he keeps trying to rig the vote because he knows Republicans are set for a shellacking in November. Eligible Americans can vote by mail, can register today, and can cast their ballot in November with total confidence, because our elections remain safe and secure no matter how many lies Trump and his allies tell.”