Thanks so much for being here. I’ve got a great edition for you today. But before we jump in, hit the ❤️ like button and restack this—especially for the Post Office story.
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A Judge Just Caught Them Breaking Her Order
On March 31, Trump signed an executive order targeting mail-in voting. To carry it out, the US Postal Service wrote that before your state can mail you a ballot, it has to upload your name and address into a new federal database. If it doesn’t, the Post Office will refuse to accept that state’s ballots for mailing.
More than 200,000 comments came in on the rule. In defending it, the Post Office compared ballot mail to cremated remains and replica explosives—things it says need special handling.
One federal judge has stopped all of it. Her name is Indira Talwani and she sits in Boston. She blocked the order in June for the 23 states and DC that sued, then blocked it again on August 11 for the whole country—and that time she told the Post Office it could not even finish writing the rule.
On August 21, a Friday night, it sent out its completed rule to be published. Then it got worse for them.
Three days later the Supreme Court set aside her June order. The Post Office was being harmed, the justices said, because it couldn’t even start writing a rule. It had finished one that Friday.
And yesterday, Talwani ruled the Post Office violated her August order and can’t pretend they misunderstood it. When they went to the Supreme Court in July, she wrote, they faked being in compliance. The Supreme Court believed them.
The rule publishes today but cannot touch a single ballot. Your state will mail yours in November the way it always has.
They are not winning this. By ten o’clock Monday night, their lawyers were begging her to throw out her August order.
Indianapolis Residents Beat The Data Centers
Data centers are becoming a hot topic for election season. Warehouses full of computers that are taking over communities—running around the clock, sucking up electricity and water. That’s why so many people are fighting them. They make power bills go up, and the hum from the building never stops.
Indianapolis had already approved two data centers with more planned. In May, the City-County Council asked the zoning commission to stop approving them. That commission is appointed, not elected, and it ignored the Council.
On July 1, residents packed the hearing room and confronted them in person. The commission voted 5 to 3 to keep moving ahead anyway. Two weeks later it approved a third.
So they stopped asking the appointed board and went to the people they elect. On August 10, the council voted 23 to 1 to freeze all new data centers. Jeanne Gaunt watched from an overflow room wearing a crown that read “for moratorium,” the legal term for a freeze.
Nine days later the commission folded, 6 to nothing. Nothing new gets approved anywhere in Indianapolis through the end of next year. The three already approved still go forward—state law protects them.
The residents lost in July with the same argument they won with in August. Nothing changed but the room they walked into.
Nearly a third of Indiana’s counties have already moved to restrict data centers. This fight is coming to your town, and the lesson from Indianapolis is simple: it turned when they went to the people they could vote out. That’s what November is all about.
Warren Gave Him Until Friday To Answer
Presidents have to file a form listing every stock they buy and sell. On June 3, Trump’s form reports a purchase of Palantir—a company that builds software the Pentagon uses. Its stock climbs when the world gets dangerous.
His negotiators were closing out the war with Iran. The deal was announced June 14. The form shows a Palantir sale on June 16. On June 17, Trump signed a copy of the deal at a dinner in Versailles. On June 18, another sale, up to a million dollars.
And this wasn’t even the half of it. Last summer, Trump signed an executive order speeding up data center construction, the same kind of projects Indianapolis just froze. In June his accounts bought stock in seven power and water companies and sold none—American Water Works, Duke, Exelon, FirstEnergy, NRG, PG&E, and Vistra.
There were 1,051 trades made in one month, worth up to $263 million.
Trump’s people say he has no role in choosing any of it. His son Eric says it’s in a blind trust, where an outsider handles the money and Trump isn’t told what’s in it. But Trump signed the form that details all of the trades himself.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Robert Garcia are now investigating the trades. They sent Trump a 17-page letter demanding to know who runs his accounts, and why 30 trades line up with what the government was about to do. One was the sale of up to $25 million in Meta stock only five days before advisor Peter Navarro went on Fox and said the regime would make data center builders like Meta pay for their own electricity and water bills.
The company that would have to pay got sold. The ones that would collect got bought.
Warren and Garcia gave Trump until Friday to answer. He doesn’t have to—yet. Electing a new Congress in November is how that changes.
A Contract Beat A Billionaire
Karen Attiah was an editor—then a columnist—at The Washington Post for 11 years. She’s the winner of the George Polk Award, which is one of journalism’s top prizes. She was never once disciplined. Then the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed.
In the hours after, Attiah posted about how America reacts differently to acts of violence depending on who commits it.
Her editor read the posts the next morning at 7:54, then texted HR about it. They met without her at 9:30, and then again at 11:30 with the CEO. The termination email reached Attiah’s inbox at 6:39 that night, claiming she endangered the lives of Post employees.
But in accordance with her union contract, the Post had to prove that Attiah did something so horrible it warranted skipping every warning and moving straight to firing her. But it couldn’t. The arbitrator, Sarah Miller Espinosa, threw out the safety excuse and called the firing wildly out of proportion.
Attiah gets her job back and every dollar of back pay. A contract did that.
Every single day, we will continue to investigate the Trump regime, while organizing some of the largest pressure campaigns on Congress and social media. We’re only able to do all of this because we are truly independent, with no billionaires and no advertisers pressuring us to sell things to you.
But that also means we depend solely on our readers for funding. So if you haven’t yet, join our movement to win back Congress by becoming a paid subscriber today. I’m looking for seventeen of you before midnight:
Then hit the ❤️ like button and restack this before you go. Somebody who follows you is about to face the same fight in their own town. Send them the Indianapolis story.
Onward!
Scott
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Robert Garcia gave Trump until Friday to explain his stock trades. If you could add one question to that letter, what would it be?
The economy is the top issue again, and Democrats finally lead on it. What’s the argument for voting for Democrats that actually lands with people in your life?
Let me know in the comments!
🚨 MAIN FOCUS AGAIN TODAY🚨 Tell Congress to stop Trump's destruction of our national forests!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trump-from-destroying-45-million-acres-of-our-national-forests/
Let's get Blanche to release ALL Epstein files: https://tinyurl.com/2uc9vca9
Close Dilley: https://tinyurl.com/w9zj48j6
Protect US Forest Service: https://tinyurl.com/mrx8cvv7
Data center pause: https://bit.ly/4twnWMU
25th Amendment Commission https://tinyurl.com/44afaxvd
Defend voting rights: https://tinyurl.com/3f3m728j
I keep coming back to the trust claim. You don’t get to call it blind and then sign the form that lists every trade. Those two things cannot both be true.