Try and Stop Us Digest — September 10, 2026

Must Read

Show Me Chaos: Missouri Map Headed Back to The Supreme Court

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court stayed out of the fight over Missouri's state Supreme Court blocking the GOP's map. Hours later, a different federal judge ordered the state to use that map anyway — and on Wednesday, an appeals court refused to stop him. NBC News / The Hill: Kavanaugh's Tuesday ruling wasn't about the map itself — he simply declined to overturn Missouri's own Supreme Court, which had blocked the map under state law. But that same day, federal judge Stephen Clark ruled in a separate case that the Constitution required Missouri to use the map anyway. On Wednesday, an all-Republican-appointee panel on the 8th Circuit refused to pause Clark's order. With no other court left to turn to, the map's opponents are now asking the Supreme Court to step in a second time. Their filing warns the conflict “is mounting in real time.”

Missouri's secretary of state is running from contempt charges — and begging a federal judge to bail him out. KCTV: Secretary of State Denny Hoskins faces possible contempt for using the map the state's high court already blocked. Rather than answer for it, Missouri's AG asked a different judge to shield him from the proceedings entirely. Hoskins, defiant on X: "I look forward to my day in court."

DOJ Tells Supreme Court: Let Trump’s Mail Voting Order Take Effect Even If Voters Are Disenfranchised

States warn the Supreme Court that letting Trump's mail-voting rule take effect would cause "chaos" — and it's not just Democrats saying so. LA Times / New York Times / NOTUS: "The efforts that state and local elections officials would have to undertake to even begin an attempt at compliance are herculean," the states' brief says, warning that "even if state and local officials were somehow able to implement the new rule perfectly," USPS itself still risks "technical breakdown, ineptitude, and delay." California alone would need to update systems across all 58 counties. Even officials in red states warned the rule would be "an unmitigated disaster." Signed by GOP officials in Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Kansas, plus Utah's lieutenant governor, the brief didn't dispute Trump's fraud claims — it just said "attempting to implement the rule now will almost certainly lead to mistakes, delays and confusion." A separate brief from election law experts, including Rick Hasen, called the administration's claims of urgency "speculative and weak," noting DOJ has "offered no evidence" mail fraud is even a real problem.

DOJ's Supreme Court filing admits its rule could disenfranchise voters — and argues that's a reason to let it take effect faster, not slower. Democracy Docket: "If the injunction is eventually stayed and the rule takes effect for this year's elections—as should occur—there is a grave risk that States may not have taken the necessary steps to comply... potentially depriving those States' citizens of the ability to vote by mail," Solicitor General Sauer wrote. He also warned that "once those ballot envelopes enter the mailstream, there is no retrieving them," and that each day the current block stays in place "risks sowing confusion and chaos."

A 200,000-member postal workers union, 20+ former governors, and a nonpartisan military-voters group have all now filed briefs backing the block. Democracy Docket / Democracy Docket: The postal union called it the first time in USPS's 250-year history it has "created a rule to reject mail." A group representing military and overseas voters separately warned the rule provides no way to tell an ineligible ballot from a soldier's legitimate one.

Judges Are Bracing For Federal Agents To Seize Ballots Mid-Election

Once considered unthinkable, ballot seizures happened twice this year already — in Fulton County, Georgia and Riverside County, California. NPR: UCLA's Safeguarding Democracy Project released a new guide this week to help judges scrutinize search warrants during an active election. "Lots of things that were off the table are now on the table," said the project's director, Rick Hasen. "We want judges to understand you can't unscramble the egg."

Trump Wants Millions Erased From The Census That Decides Your Representation

The Trump Administration’s plan would exclude noncitizens from the count used to allocate House seats and end the collection of race and ethnicity data entirely — a practice unbroken since 1790. NPR / Washington Post: The 14th Amendment requires apportionment based on the "whole number of persons in each state," with no citizenship carve-out. Trump tried and failed to add a citizenship question in his first term, and the Supreme Court rejected his reasoning as "contrived." New York AG Letitia James vowed to fight it again: "The Constitution is clear. Every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted in the census." The stakes go beyond Congress — Missouri, one of the states pushing hardest for the change, could use it to redraw state legislative maps, shifting power away from younger, more diverse cities toward older, whiter rural areas. Civil rights groups warn losing race and ethnicity data would also make it far harder to track and address health disparities.

New Audit Results: USPS Botched The Ballots It Was Supposed To Protect

Inspectors found a third of delivery units had no training materials posted, and one Pennsylvania facility postmarked 56 ballots with the wrong date. ProPublica: "The administration and USPS are simply incapable of successfully meeting vast and radical new responsibilities under the president's executive order," said David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. In a Harrisburg facility, 108 ballots were nearly missed entirely and had to be rushed to Pittsburgh the morning of the election.

Election Deniers Have Already Taken Over Local Election Offices

A cohort of Trump loyalists has quietly taken over election administration in statehouses and county offices nationwide — and this November may be their first real test. The Atlantic: Georgia's state election board is now dominated by 2020 conspiracy theorists, one of whom filed an amicus brief supporting January's FBI raid on Fulton County. Cleta Mitchell's Election Integrity Network now has affiliates in at least 30 states. "We've recruited over 10,000 attorneys all over the country who are willing to serve pro bono," said CEIR's David Becker, describing the scale of the legal response being organized to meet it.

In The States

OHIO — The state is asking the 6th Circuit to let it enforce a proof-of-citizenship voter registration law that a lower court already blocked. Democracy Docket: The law would make it harder to register for anyone without citizenship paperwork on hand, including women whose legal names have changed. A federal judge already found the requirements likely violate the National Voter Registration Act.

OREGON — State officials are urging voters to skip the mail entirely and use drop boxes instead, as concerns mount over Trump's mail-voting order. KVAL: Secretary of State Tobias Read is requesting additional security funding. Rural voters face a tougher tradeoff — one Lane County resident, 30 miles from town, said he'll drive straight to a drop box this year rather than risk the mail.

UTAH — DOJ is investigating Utah's election chief for refusing to hand over the state's complete voter database. Salt Lake Tribune: "If you cared about the security of the elections... you would not be suing all of us, you would not be investigating all of us constantly," said Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson. Utah's own comprehensive audit found just 27 confirmed noncitizens out of more than 2 million voter records reviewed.

What Experts Are Saying

Marc Elias says Trump's plan is simple: make it harder for you to vote, and easier for him to cheat. "Individually, each of these developments is troubling. Collectively, they paint a damning picture of an authoritarian president trying to rig the vote before it happens. This government-sponsored voter suppression is on a scale we have not seen in our nation's history." — Marc Elias, Democracy Docket

Headlines

Trump's Attacks on Voting

The Dispatch: Will the Feds Be a Nuisance or a Menace at the Polls in November?

NPR: Mail-in voters weigh flying to vote in person and other backup plans amid uncertainty

Democracy Docket: Trump administration makes it harder for some overseas voters to request a ballot