Try and Stop Us Digest — September 14, 2026

Must Read

Another Judge — This One A Trump Appointee — Just Blocked The Mail-Ballot Order

Judge Carl Nichols, who'd sided with the administration back in May, ruled the risk of ballots going uncounted was too high to let the rule take effect. AP: "Plaintiffs have demonstrated that, absent an injunction, there is an increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections," Nichols wrote. "The public has a strong interest in ensuring that doesn't happen." Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are all already mailing ballots.

Show Me Chaos: Missouri Republicans Keep Losing And Keep Fighting Anyway

The Supreme Court already settled this: Missouri will use its old, fair map in November. Republicans are still burning time and money trying to get a different answer out of a lower court that can't actually overrule it. St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The 8th Circuit ordered new briefing and arguments on the case anyway — even though the Supreme Court's order already controls the outcome no matter what that lower court decides. "The 8th Circuit expedited schedule is so pointless on the merits that I suspect it's got an audience of one," said Loyola Law's Justin Levitt, referring to Trump. "The war's over, but there's still soldiers fighting."

The GOP gerrymandering stunt is causing chaos for November. Wall Street Journal: Missouri used the GOP's illegal map for its August primary and now has to revert to the old, legal map for November after the Supreme Court blocked it. That means voters who picked a candidate in August are often no longer even in that candidate's district..

Meet Trump's Election Takeover Architects: Howard Lutnick And Markwayne Mullin

Commerce Secretary Lutnick helped write the mail-voting order, built the disputed Census report on noncitizen voters and is now being pressed to ban voting machines over Chinese parts. CNN: Two sources told CNN Lutnick and his team were the actual architects behind Trump's March mail-voting order. His department's Census report — claiming 24,000 noncitizens voted in 2020 — was produced by activists from a Trump-aligned think tank who'd been embedded at the Bureau and stopped talking to career staff while writing it. Now, activists pushing to ban voting machines over Chinese-made parts say they pitched Lutnick directly for two hours, and that he told them he'd "be getting on it."

DHS Secretary Mullin has threatened to jail election officials, floated ICE at polling places, and directed hundreds of agents to hunt noncitizen voters. Votebeat: The campaign has produced little: DHS already walked back its claim of 250,000 noncitizens on the rolls, and the nationwide effort has led to just six arrests so far. Election law expert Justin Levitt says Mullin's driving motivation looks less like genuine policy concern and more like simple loyalty: "Please the boss."

Election Officials Are Bracing For Ballot Seizures, ICE At The Polls, And A President Who Might Declare A National Emergency

With seven weeks to go, election officials are actively preparing for federal agents seizing ballots, ICE showing up at polling places, and Trump declaring a national emergency to seize control of election rules directly. Washington Post: None of these are hypothetical anymore — the FBI already took 2020 ballots from Georgia, and a sheriff in Riverside County, California seized ballots from a 2025 referendum. Trump himself has said he regrets not seizing voting machines after 2020. Ten Democratic prosecutors formed a rapid-response group, nicknamed FAFO, specifically to be ready to sue the moment any of this happens. Legal scholars say a national emergency declaration wouldn't actually grant Trump any real power over elections, but warn that's not the point: the strategy is to act first and let courts catch up later, after the damage is already done.

Democrats are training tens of thousands of poll watchers. The Guardian: The New Battlefield Project has three parts: trained poll monitors to help confused voters and document intimidation; a push encouraging voters to cast ballots early rather than wait; and a "democracy defense network," led by Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, that will track disinformation and election subversion tactics in real time. "We didn't want to be caught flat-footed," said Jane Kleeb, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, which is running the project

DOJ Is Pushing Prosecutors To Bring More Noncitizen Voting Charges

The noncitizen voting law carries a maximum one-year sentence and has almost never been prosecuted, because it requires proving someone knowingly broke the law, not just that they were mistakenly registered. Bloomberg Law: DOJ leadership is now pushing all 93 U.S. attorneys offices to prioritize these cases, even as officials internally acknowledge most flagged voters were registered by accident through routine DMV errors, not intentional fraud.

In The States

NORTH CAROLINA — A hard-fought state Supreme Court race pits Justice Anita Earls, a former voting rights lawyer, against a legislator who co-sponsored some of the very laws Earls has ruled against. Bolts: "In my view, it is harder to vote in North Carolina now than in Mississippi," Earls said. Common Cause's Brooks Fuller calls the state "a laboratory of anti-democracy." Earls is the only seat on the ballot, so Republicans keep their majority regardless — but a loss would set Democrats back even further.

TEXAS — The state Supreme Court blocked Galveston County from using voting precincts it redrew after the primary already happened. Texas Tribune: The county judge had told local media the mid-cycle redraw was meant to "help keep the county Republican." The court called that "serious constitutional concerns," ruling a primary and its general election are "one election" that can't have its boundaries changed in between.

WISCONSIN — Independent experts confirmed Milwaukee's August election error was human mistake, not tampering — exactly what officials said from the start. Votebeat: Multiple outside experts reviewed the full audit logs after conspiracy theories spread online. "I don't see a 'there' there," said computer science professor Duncan Buell. The mistake delayed results by about two hours and never affected the vote count.

What Experts Are Saying

A voting rights attorney says Missouri Republicans' defeat carries a nationwide warning — including how far they were willing to go to win. "Republican legislators threatened impeachment if the state Supreme Court held Hoskins in contempt for his defiance... The letter follows similar GOP threats in other states, as high courts weighed challenges to gerrymandered election districts. In Utah and Pennsylvania, Republicans explicitly tied their threats to rulings to strike down their gerrymandered districts." — Billy Corriher, Democracy Docket

Headlines

Trump's Attacks on Voting

Wall Street Journal: How Your Mail Carrier Ended Up at the Center of the Midterms Battle

Democracy Docket: The U.S. Postal Service said it would launch its mail ballot portal this week. Where is it?