Originally published at: Don’t Give Donald Trump’s Half-Baked Elections Plans More Juice Than They Deserve
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. An early episode of South Park features a subplot in which tiny gnomes sneak into the houses of South Park residents in order to steal their underpants. When asked why, they explain that collecting underpants is just the beginning: “Well, Phase 1,…
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Cool story. Trump raped 12-year old girls.
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Release the Epstein files!! Release the Putin photos of Donnie!! Release the kraken!!!
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Charlie’s in the ground, medical miracle in front of world tomorrow, but come Wednesday, back to EPSTEIN! AND MORE EPSTEIN!!
Maybe even a golden shower. But I’ll take anything.
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Phase 2 in this case involves invoking the Insurrection Act, 10 USC 252.
In Phase 1 he issues an Executive Order mandating certain election security measures be taken by the folks who actually run elections. A lot of red states will probably comply, because they tend to want these things, or some of them such as voter ID, anyway. Blue states will mostly ignore these toothless non-mandates, because you are 100% correct, the president has no power to issue orders on how elections are run.
Rs will mostly win in red states, Ds will mostly win in blue states. Trump’s claim for why Ds have won in the blue states will be that this happened because they ignored his EO, and they did so because following his mandates on how to run fair elections would have hampered their ability to steal elections for the Ds. Specifically, ignoring the Trump mandates will make possible the one central means that Ds have used for decades to steal elections, letting illegals vote.
Phase 2 will consist of invoking the Insurrection Act in order to send in ICE agents to D strongholds to seize ballots and voting machines, in order to allow those forensic audits and definitive recounts that the D/RINO/Deep State conspiracy blocked in 2020 in order to steal that election. Well, this time Trump won’t have to depend on the hidebound, norm-following woke US Army to seize ballots and voting machines, he will have that new ICE army funded by the Big Beautiful Bill that he can train up without any inconvenient traditions of norm-following to get in the way of their total cooperation in stopping the steal this time.
If the audit is truly forensic and the recount truly definitive, living up the high standards of Sidney Powell, of course Trump will get his Phase 3.
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The infotainment and socials will publicize and yak unendingly about all these election-related “executive orders”, as if the “orders” had any power at all. Lots of people will believe them. Oh well, looks like I can’t vote now. Can’t get out of the house and don’t have a driver’s license.
It’s up to citizens with backbone and civic responsibility to do what we can to spread the word that NO! Nothing has changed. The “president” was just gassing off. If you want to know how voting works, check with your County Clerk or Secretary of State. It’s up to THEM.
I miss the heady days when reporters couldn’t go to press or air without clear fact checking and confirmation. Now, it’s up to the rest of us.
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Just a question as I’m not a lawyer, but can Trump issue an executive order that instructs the Postmaster General to make a rule that government election ballots can no longer be accepted as deliverable by the US Mail?
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And the usual bed-wetters at TPM will wail on Dr. Smith-like about how we’re all doomed – doomed!
“Perception is reality” only if you’re ignorant enough to believe outrageous lies – and cowardly enough to “obey in advance.”
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We need to just say it, we have a Party and a president that currently control all levers of federal power that are openly hostile to education.
With that obvious fact stated, I do not understand why this from the article is a problem.
In politically conservative communities like this one, there’s an added tension for schools that rely on federal money to operate: how to sound the alarm while staying out of partisan politics.
That is unless the parents of the student body don’t care about education, if, as is certainly the case, who the parents vote for affects their children’s education, the only way affect the situation is to be honest about partisan politics.
That is we currently have a political party that is openly hostile to public education and to not discuss it is to give the supporters of that party a free pass. So unless the community does not care nor does it want to hear about education of their children, in which case it does not matter, the reason for the crisis should be honestly discussed and that reason is one political party opposes public education.
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They think ignorance is bliss, all the easier to take everything from the people while you can.
But it won’t take long before the people won’t have anything worth taking, and they won’t be able to flee the country because everything will have gone to pot by then.
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This is very scary.
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Trump controls the US Postal Service, so he can substantially disrupt vote-by-mail. For example, the USPS could take on the task of inspecting ballots for evidence of fraud or for bamboo fibers. They could “verify” ballots with federal law enforcement visiting the return addresses on ballots to confirm that voters have the federally required proof of citizenship, that they sent the ballot, and even confirm that their votes are correct on the ballot.
This effort doesn’t have to be at all legal or effective for finding fraud. It just needs to make people fear mailing their ballot. The more chaotic and ham fisted, the better! They may also take on the task of inspecting and verifying ballots in drop boxes, which might require destructively opening those drop boxes.
Even if all of this is only threatened, never done, it will prevent many, many people from mailing ballots. Instead they will go to in-person voting, with will be overcrowded and where it is much easier for federal law enforcement to intimidate large numbers of voters, especially in urban and minority areas.
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Actually, I suspect most maga parents actually do care about education. But, judging by the ones I’ve spoken with, many seem of the opinion that all the public schools do is indoctrinate children in anti-American, anti-Christian, far-lefty dogma. They don’t actually teach any useful stuff, like readin’ writin’ 'rithmatic, etc. And forget that “history” crap! Way to hate America! Same for any “litrichure” written after 1860.
This is why home schooling has become so trendy among those with the means to do it. And, of course, private (often church) schools. The results can vary from pathetic to scholarship-winning.
Folks on the left do themselves no favors by brainwashing themselves that their opponents are mindless cretins.
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The issue is “PUBLIC EDUCATION”, and with that in mind, I stand by my post.
That is why in “politically conservative communities” school officials have to be so concerned over “partisan politics” for just trying to get the the promised and needed funds to teach children.
To your post I think what you are referring to is that you can care deeply about “YOUR CHILDREN” receiving a good education and not care or in many cases not want the other’s children to get educated at all and for sure not in the same schools as yours.
He can also send in ICE on election day to stop everyone going in to the polling places and checking their citizenship. Oh, don’t have your passport, birth certificate, or citizenship papers with you? Sorry, you can’t go in to vote.
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- Claim huge GOP wins in key races … before polls close.
- Claim evidence of lost and ‘fake’ ballots, and compromised voting machines.
- Open investigations into anyone involved in computer voting machine security, claim they are corrupt lefties/anarchists.
- Open FBI investigations into county vote tabulation supervisors in critical districts, DOX them on right wing media.
- Executive Order FBI or better yet, National Guard, to ‘safeguard’ voting machines. (Declaration of national emergency — to protect the right to vote — they always claim the opposite of what they are doing)
- SCOTUS OK’s on shadow docket.
- New Executive Order - DOTE (Department of Truthful Elections) takes control of the computers/machines, claims critical counts have been rigged by left wing anarchists/socialists.
- Lock up ‘challenged’ physical paper ballots from Democratic Party leaning cities, to ‘protect the will of the American people’. Slow the count down to snails pace.
- Freeze vote counting due to Constitution mandated dates/ time limits.
- Supreme Court, ‘due to time constraints in Constitution’, (as in 2000 election.) gives OK to #9. 6 - 3.
- Republicans hold House, Senate. Certify their victory and a new Congress with increased Republican control. — If despite all this, the GOP doesn’t hold the House, claim: the Democrats stole the election, “This administration will not aid or participate in any investigations or House oversight by cheating, crooked Democrats.”
- If protests develop Trump declares another National Emergency, invokes the Insurrection Act.
- New National Guard units trained for civil unrest ordered to patrol streets until new Congress is seated. National Guard, ICE and federal agents make mass arrests as necessary. Immigrant detention center space used for lockup of American citizens, in ‘protective custody’.
- Vocal Democratic Party leaders threatened with detention and arrest
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By law, yes, that would be possible for Trump to do, because the provisions of 10 USC 252 go further than even Germany’s infamous Enabling Act in the power it grants a president.
That power is all theoretical though. It’s very magnitude, the fact that it is completely unlimited – “whenever the president considers” is the wording of the law – makes this theoretical power violate all norms. There’s the law as written, but stray too far from what people imagine the law must be, and people refuse to believe that what is written in black and white could possibly actually be the law.
Trump could theoretically have used 10 USC 252 to send in the US Army to seize ballots and voting machines after he lost re-election iin 2020. Flynn urged him to do exactly that in the WH meeting of 12/18/20, but Trump was dissuaded from taking this advice by the quite reasonable advice from others that the Army would probably follow the norms and not a law that the norms said could not possibly mean what it said.
My idea is that it would be much easier to get the new ICE army to seize ballots and voting machines in 2026 or 28, than it was to get the stodgy US Army, with its two and a half century norm of not interfering in elections, to do so in 2020. The ICE army will be formed around a cadre of existing ICE agents who have already shown that their organization follows a different norm, the overall idea that everyone not born in the US is a criminal alien enemy of the US until proven otherwise. Of course they are going to screen the new 10,000 ICE agent hires to exclude anyone who doesn’t fervently follow that norm, plus the related idea that these aliens are criminals conspiring with the Ds to replace true Americans. And, just as the MAGA people believe that the 2020 election was stolen by Ds – because we let criminal illegal aliens vote – so both the ICE army and that portion of the general public will find it completely normal that those damn Ds did it again, only this time we have a president who won’t let them get away with it, a president who will send in ICE to do its job and prove that illegals voted by seizing ballots and voting machines.
It’s still going to be risky, because even this plan is going to violate many people’s idea of the norms. My point is that doing it the way I suggest they will, after the vote, is less likely to provoke counteraction driven by those more conventional ideas of what the norms require. Doing it the way you suggest, on Election Day, seems to me more likely to motivate people to vote against them while they still can. The drama will all take place on Election Day, which is bad enough for the optics because people in the suburbs will still be voting, but it won’t be practicable to wait until Election Day to spring the ICE army invasion of inner cities. There would have to be planning ahead of time, known to too many people to maintain operational security. Much better to have stories spread for a day or so about illegals seen at various polling places, etc, etc. before the orders are given to seize the ballots and voting machines.
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