🗳 The Emergency Isn’t the Election. It’s the President.

Pro‑Trump operatives are road‑testing a legal doomsday device: a draft executive order that declares China interfered in the 2020 election and uses that as the basis for a new “national emergency” giving Trump direct power over how Americans vote. The 17‑page draft, circulated by activists who say they’re in touch with the White House, envisions banning mail ballots and voting machines nationwide on “national security” grounds — overriding rules the Constitution leaves to states and Congress.

The theory is simple and dangerous. If foreign actors allegedly touched election infrastructure, the commander in chief supposedly gets to treat voting rules like sanctions policy or wartime export controls. The lawyers pushing this, from Peter Ticktin to conspiracy veteran Jerome Corsi, openly concede the president has no normal authority to run elections. Their answer is to manufacture a permanent emergency in which he does, stretching a 2018 sanctions order on foreign interference — originally used to hit Russian and Iranian outfits — into a pretext for telling Arizona or Georgia who can vote and how.

Underneath the pseudo‑constitutional gloss, it’s the same “Stop the Steal” fantasy with a national‑security badge pinned on. U.S. intelligence already concluded that China considered but did not carry out a 2020 influence operation, and every serious audit and recount, including the infamous Arizona “bamboo fibers” circus, reaffirmed Biden’s win. That hasn’t stopped Tulsi Gabbard’s intelligence shop from staging high‑visibility “reviews” of old ballots and machines, or Trump from promising an “irrefutable” legal argument he’ll drop as an executive order if Congress refuses to pass his voter‑ID and anti–mail voting bill.

The playbook is out in the open: invent a foreign plot, declare it an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” then use emergency powers meant for sanctions and war to reach into domestic politics and rewrite the rules in the middle of the game. Courts have already blocked chunks of Trump’s last election order. Now the same logic is being rebuilt, wrapped tighter in the flag and stamped “national security” so judges and the public feel more pressure to look the other way.

The full Trump doctrine fits in one Iran‑and‑China‑flavored scenario: if tomorrow the U.S. slides into a real shooting war with Beijing, a standing “national emergency” over elections becomes a loaded weapon on the Resolute Desk. It’s not hard to imagine Trump arguing you can’t change the commander in chief during a war, that normal voting is too “vulnerable,” that national security demands a “temporary” pause or postponement — the same logic Zelensky used to delay elections under bombardment, turned into a tool for a man who’s spent six years insisting any vote he doesn’t control is illegitimate.

At that point, the ballot box isn’t a sacred institution. It’s just another system the president can shut down “for your own protection.”

#Trump #elections #executiveOrder #emergency #China #votingRights #democracy

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Trump’s Southern Boomerang

Donald Trump wanted to carve up Black districts and lock in GOP power. Instead, he may have woken up the one voting bloc that can still ruin his midterms.

In state after state, Black voters are treating redistricting and Voting Rights Act rollbacks not as “process stories,” but as an existential threat.

You can see it in South Carolina, where early voting in this month’s primary spiked to near presidential levels and turnout in James Clyburn’s district jumped by more than 50 percent — enough to scare state Republicans off a plan to slice Black voters out of his seat.

You see it in Louisiana and Mississippi, where hardball maps have triggered big rallies, new volunteers and talk of being dragged “back before 1965.”

And you see it in Georgia, where lawmakers beat a retreat after public protests made clear that “fixing the lines” now looks like fixing the result.

Democrats smell opportunity. Models like Split Ticket’s suggest an unusually blue‑friendly climate, and special elections have shown them overperforming by double digits since Trump came back into office.

That’s the fantasy: a Southern backlash that flips Senate seats in Georgia and North Carolina, maybe even shocks in places like Lindsey Graham’s South Carolina.

The problem is that “anger at Trump” doesn’t automatically convert into organized votes, especially in poor, rural Black communities that have been burned by decades of broken promises.

On the ground, the story is messy. In places like Moncks Corner, Republican primary voters still dominate and happily tell reporters they trust Trump and the GOP to “bring us back to where we need to be,” even as they admit Democrats might flip a seat.

In nearby St. Stephen, Black residents talk about feeling personally targeted by Trump’s voting moves — “they’re trying to make it so I can’t vote no more” — and vow to fight back, but they also miss runoffs, lack rides to the polls and juggle prescriptions, low wages and boarded‑up Main Streets.

So resistance is real, but fragile. Black organizers in groups across the Deep South are trying to turn outrage into turnout with education sessions and field hearings, while warning Democrats not to treat Black votes as guaranteed or automatic.

Trump’s war on districts and rights has clearly “awakened” people, as one activist put it — but whether that becomes a wave or just another betrayed hope depends on whether the party actually invests, and whether the people who feel most under threat can overcome the very obstacles the system is throwing in their way.

#USA #Trump #midterms #BlackVoters #votingrights #gerrymandering #South #fakeDemocracy

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Ballots Without Borders

Israel can deliver a ballot box to a soldier in Syria. An ordinary Israeli citizen living abroad generally has to fly home to vote.

Military voting opened Oct. 21 at more than 850 polling stations, including positions in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. About a quarter are mobile. Voting continues through Oct. 27, subject to operational requirements.

“Our mission is to enable all IDF service members to exercise their democratic right to vote by secret ballot, including during operational activities and combat beyond the border,” said military elections officer Col. Vered Ben-Yehuda.

The national electorate totals roughly 7.3 million, including about 810,000 people living abroad. Most overseas citizens cannot vote remotely. Exceptions cover diplomats and certain other state personnel and their families. Around 4,800 qualified to vote at diplomatic missions.

The military arrangements rightly protect soldiers’ access to the ballot. They also expose a deliberate distinction. Serving the state abroad brings the polling station to the voter. Simply being a citizen abroad usually does not.

#IsraelElections #VotingRights #IDF #Democracy

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