Many of the top stories of recent days are actually continuations of things that I hadn’t got around to mentioning in my previous post.

Starting with: Last Friday, President Trump announced out of the blue that, effective immediately, three major news outlets–CNN, MS NOW (the former MSNBC), and POLITICO were being banned from the White House. There was widespread agreement that this action was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, in addition to a violation of due process.

Importantly, the other major news networks jumped to the defense of CNN et al, in a way that was almost surely of real interest to Trump. CNN had been one of five networks who shared rotational responsibility for the pool of TV cameras and microphones that cover the President at the White House. The other four pool members announced that they would suspend that television pool, in solidarity with their fellow journalists. As a result, over the course of this week as Trump has given press availabilities at the White House–including one for inauguration of the new White House helipad, something of which Trump seems inordinately proud–it has not been possible for the public at large to hear whatever Trump was saying.

Of course, there is a lawsuit, captioned CNN v. Trump. In the middle of night last night, the Trump-appointed judge who caught the case issued a temporary restraining order against the administration, which from what I read seems clearcut in light of existing case law about White House press access. However, this morning the White House did not immediately restore access to the impacted networks and individuals, raising speculation as to whether the administration was trying to foment a Constitutional crisis by refusing to obey a court order. By this afternoon, however, that crisis had passed as the networks’ access had been restored.

After banning the networks, the administration also announced the launch of what it is calling Trump TV, which appears to be a stream on YouTube carrying (for now) recordings of Trump speeches and appearances. Combined with Trump’s praise today for the Chinese press corps accompanying visiting Premier Xi Jinping, all this has created speculation that Trump’s ultimate objective is to nationalize the press coverage of his Presidency. Which sounds very American, doesn’t it?

Nine days ago, outgoing Rep. Massie (R-KY) stealthily filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Hegseth, and did so in a procedural posture that would have required a House vote within two days. In response, Speaker Johnson adjourned the House for the midterms earlier than originally scheduled, thus avoiding the vote until after the election. Speaking of lame duck Kentucky Republicans, Sen. McConnell made his return to the Senate recently after three months of being hospitalized, although his appearance raised concerns as to whether he’s completely competent to complete the remainder of his term.

Last week there were additional actions taken by Judge Cooper in the ongoing saga over the Kennedy Center, Beatty v. Trump. First, he enjoined the Kennedy Center Board from renaming the campus on which the Center sits to “President Donald J. Trump Plaza”, or from inscribing the words “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” on the face of the Center. In response, Trump threatened to demolish the Center. That led Representative Beatty to return to the courts, in response to which Judge Cooper ordered that 30 days notice be given before any action is taken to demolish the Center.

Now for some more recent news:

The U.N. General Assembly is taking place in New York City this week. Trump gave a 45-minute speech which, per the NYTimes’ sub-head, “amounted to a rejection of the founding concept of the United Nations.” Ted Widmer, writing for The Guardian, noted that “the saddest aspect of this speech was its utter lack of American idealism – the very force that led to the UN’s creation…. [i]t was just raw power; and a power that is likely to diminish in the years ahead.” Per a new CNN poll, Americans’ support for Trump’s handling of foreign policy has declined from 42% at the start of his term to 29% now.

Nate Silver’s estimate of a Democratic Senate after the midterms reached a new high today, at 69%. He now has Kansas up to 32% for the Democrats, with a few other long-shot targets moving into “maybe” range such as Nebraska (22% for the independent, Dan Osgood), South Carolina (15%), and even Florida (15%). More generally, Silver notes the oddity that the signs of a blue tsunami are stronger in red states than in blue states; he has the Republicans at 11% to flip Minnesota, for instance, and he has Collins at 28% to retain her seat in Maine. Speaking of Senator Collins, ProPublica has an interesting story this week entitled “The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins–Until Trump Got In the Way.”

Finally, the long-brewing litigation on third-country removals of deportable aliens, D.V.D. vs. DHS, has just today again reached the SCOTUS emergency docket, as last week the 1st Circuit upheld much of the original lower court injunction that SCOTUS had stayed in June 2025 (pending appeal to the 1st Circuit) over the liberals’ dissent.

So much for being more regular about posting…

This week, Canada’s shift away from co-dependency with its southern neighbor continued, as the European Union announced it would extend an invitation to Canada for “Associate Member” status, a category that does not currently exist. What exactly this status means is still unclear. Trump doesn’t seem happy about the prospect.

Let’s survey some economic indicators, shall we? The national price of gas is now up to $4.48 a gallon, up from $4.10 a month ago, while the national price of diesel has reached an all-time high of $6.50 a gallon, up from $5.55 a month ago. Annual inflation is currently at 3.4%, compared with 2.4% in February before the war with Iran started. In light of persistent inflation this week the Federal Reserve, now chaired by Trump loyalist Kevin Warsh, voted to raise the Fed Funds rate by 25 bps, the first rate hike since 2023. Trump didn’t lash out at Warsh the way I thought he might, but he does continue to hold unrealistic views as to what U.S. interest rate levels ought to be. The S&P 500 remains up 11.5% year-to-date, although it has been treading water over the past six weeks. The average 30-year mortgage rate climbed to 6.95% this week, the same level it was at Trump’s second inauguration; it had gotten below 6% just before the war with Iran started. Finally, the average price of ground beef hit an all-time high of $6.92 per pound last month; its climb during the Biden administration from $3.97 to $5.60 was one of the drivers of public dissatisfaction with Biden. Yet, somehow, Congressman Emmer (R-MN) was quoted on the campaign trail this week touting ground beef prices below $2 per pound.

With such ‘robust’ economic news, it is perhaps not surprising that over the past 10 days Nate Silver’s assessment of the Democratic Party’s chances this fall have improved. Right now he makes the Democrats 65% favorites to take the Senate, up from 51% when I last posted. He’s moved Talarico up from 56% to 70%, while in Iowa Turek’s chances have risen from 35% to 52%. He also thinks it is now 51% that the Democrats will get to 52+ seats, which could be important given Fetterman’s unreliability.

There is also news about the U.S. having reached a new security arrangement with Denmark regarding Greenland. However, it is not yet clear what is actually in the new agreement, and whether it is substantively different from the pre-Trump status quo. As a practical matter, even if it doesn’t actually change reality, it defuses tensions with the E.U. while giving Trump an ability to, as a Danish reported put it, “take a victory lap on social media.”

However the main piece of news since I last posted comes from the Supreme Court, which took some all-too-rare action against a Trump administration policy priority.

I had briefly mentioned in my last post the various controversies around first an Executive Order, and then a final regulation, imposing new requirements regarding the transmission of federal election ballots via the mails. As lawyer Adam Unikowsky explains, the primary underlying federal objective isn’t really about preventing mail-in voting fraud at all:

“The government has had difficulty collecting voter information from states. There’s currently a separate stream of litigation in which the federal government is suing states trying to get access to their voter rolls. These lawsuits have failed 23 straight times. So the federal government is trying something different. …[T]he federal government will leverage its power over the Postal Service to prevent states from sending mail ballots unless the states give the federal government information sufficient to identify, by name, everyone who voted by mail.”

A secondary underlying federal objective, arguably, is to wreak havoc with an election cycle that is likely to be adverse to the administration. The new rule may be illegal as a general matter, but in attempting to implement it two months before an election the administration is creating significant operational risk that mail-in voting for the 2026 midterms would not function smoothly–which, given the current politics of mail-in voting, seems to be a risk the administration would welcome.

As such, while the plaintiffs seeking to stop the new regulation are certainly arguing that the regulation is entirely invalid, they are more immediately concerned with getting it enjoined for the 2026 midterms. And that’s what SCOTUS did last week, in a case now captioned USPS vs. California: The per curiam majority denied the administration’s application for a stay of an adverse lower court ruling preventing the rule from applying to the 2026 midterms, saying both that “the Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge” and that “the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not warrant a stay.”

Since the second statement quoted above would have been sufficient to justify the denial of a stay by SCOTUS, the fact that the per curiam opinion also made the first statement is interesting: It appears to signal that at least 5 Justices believe that the rule is likely illegal, period. On the other hand, we have an Alito dissent joined by Thomas in which he argues that the stay should have been granted, and we have a Kavanagh concurrence saying that he thinks there’s “at least a fair chance” that the rule is legal but that implementing it so close to an election (and with so little preparation for the rule’s requirements having been made) would be “arbitrary and capricious” under the APA.

As such, on the eventual merits question of whether the USPS has the authority to adopt this rule, we could be looking at more like a 5-4 or 6-3 split. But for now, at least, the rule is a dead issue with respect to the 2026 elections, albeit not before having dredged up a lot of concern among the general public about the potential reliability of mail-in voting.

The problem with going more than a month between blog posts is that, even in the dog days of summer, there’s more to write about than I can possibly do justice to. Still, all one can do is try…

Primaries. I believe the 2026 primary season is done at last, with Massachusetts finishing things up last week.

When I last wrote, I was eagerly awaiting the upcoming election here in Minnesota, and particularly the Democratic primary to replace retiring Senator Tina Smith. That primary pitted my Representative, moderate Angie Craig, against the sitting Lieutenant Governor, the more progressive Peggy Flanagan. My view going back several months was that while I had supported Craig as a very suitable nominee for her largely exurban 2nd District, Minnesota Democrats needn’t settle for someone that moderate in a statewide race. The party establishment agreed with that view, and Flanagan was poised to win the party endorsement at the state convention in late May. Which, according to the way party politics has always worked in Minnesota, ought to have been the end of it; primaries are a recent innovation in Minnesota, and the expectation was that losing candidates would drop out after the convention, making the primary a coronation rather than a contest.

Craig saw things differently. Shortly before the state convention, foreseeing that she would lose she announced that she would not be seeking the party endorsement at the convention and would instead contest the primary. Which she did, outspending Flanagan 4-to-1 (although honestly it felt like more of an edge than that, based on the advertising I saw). While Governor Walz remained officially neutral, his decision to not endorse his own running mate was suspicious, and in the last week of the campaign his wife endorsed Craig. It all turned to out to be for nought, however, as Flanagan managed a 59-39 victory. Her opponent in the fall will be former sports broadcaster Michelle Tafoya.

There was a surprising Senate primary result in Florida. I had thought that moderate Alex Vindman, a central figure in the first Trump impeachment trial, was facing only token opposition in the Democratic primary and could make a compelling (albeit long-shot) general election candidate. I’d never even heard of his opponent, Black progressive Representative Angie Nixon, until she beat Vindman, 56-44.

Alaska held its jungle primary, to which 4 people advance to the general. The two leading candidates are former Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, and incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan, a Republican. Peltola won 49.5% of the vote to Sen. Sullivan’s 41.4%. I would be remiss in failing to mention that one of the two minor candidates who advanced is a different Dan Sullivan, also purportedly a Republican; however, it is not looking like the potential voter confusion here will be dispositive.

In South Carolina, recall that Sen. Lindsey Graham would have been on the ballot this fall, so when he died a second primary was hastily scheduled for August. Contrary to many people’s expectations his sister Darline, who had been appointed to the seat, decided to run in the primary and received Trump’s endorsement. In a field where 5 different candidates got at least 5% of the vote, she got a 33% plurality, advancing to the runoff against Rep. Ralph Norman. Graham’s debate performance attracted much criticism, particularly when she admitted she was pretty ignorant about foreign policy. Nevertheless, Trump’s coattails got her across the finish line, as she beat Norman 52.4 – 47.6. With Tommy Tuberville likely to be elected Governor of Alabama this fall, the U.S. Senate may have a new “least qualified member” come 2027.

Finally, votes in the Massachusetts Senate primary faced an unusual choice, where the 80-year-old progressive incumbent (Markey) faced a challenge from a much younger but more moderate Representative (Moulton), forcing many voters to choose between policy preferences versus protesting the gerontocracy. Progressive policy won out, 65-35.

Canada. Well, things here have fallen apart more quickly than I would have thought possible.

Recall that back in 2018, the Trump administration negotiated a replacement for the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The new agreement, which the U.S. calls USMCA (although Canada calls it CUSMA), took effect on July 1, 2020 for an initial 16-year term. Under the original agreement, six years in there would be a trilateral joint review process. That process could result in the countries agreeing to extend USMCA for a further 16 years or, failing an ability to agree on that, in the countries having a series of annual reviews until a 16-year extension is reached, or until the agreement expires. On July 1, 2026, the U.S. announced it was not willing to renew USMCA for another 16 years, leaving the agreement intact but triggering the process of successive annual reviews.

Then, later in July, the Trump administration announced that it would impose 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian products effective August 19th, citing Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 as its authority to do so. That section of the law had never been used, and a compelling argument can be made that this authority was implicitly repealed with the passage of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

The new tariff threat brought Canada and the U.S. to the negotiating table. I was in Canada on vacation on August 18th when Trump announced a 3-day postponement of the new tariffs on the grounds that the two countries were on the verge of reaching a deal. But three days later, an hour before midnight Canadian PM Carney pulled his negotiators away, allowing the tariffs to take effect. The next day he announced that Canada would impose retaliatory tariffs, scheduled to take effect tomorrow, and explained in his speech that “in recent days the U.S. proposed new terms that were uneconomic, unfair, and undermined the net benefits to Canada, calling into question the reliability of any deal.”

So, there is now a trade war between Canada and the U.S.; that’s lovely. Trump has threatened a further escalation of the trade war, but to date his only move has been to order the U.S. government to re-name Lake Ontario as “Lake America”. I’m not aware of any lawsuits arguing that the Section 338 tariffs are illegal, but hopefully one will emerge soon.

Iran. It’s still a quagmire, with no real movement, or path forward. The price of diesel reached an all-time high of $5.90 this week, while the price of gasoline on Labor Day is $4.14 a gallon, breaching the previous Labor Day high of $3.82 from 2012.

Ballroom. One of Trump’s major priorities over the past year has been his project, in the absence of any legal authority, to tear down the East Wing of the White House and build a new ballroom (over-top of a new security bunker). At times it feels like he cares more about the ballroom than about other aspects of the Presidency, which I suppose is what one should expect when elevating a real estate developer to that role.

In late August this situation finally reached the Supreme Court, via its emergency docket, in a case captioned National Park Service v. National Trust for Historical Preservation. Disappointingly, SCOTUS ruled 5-4 in favor of the government, granting it a stay of a lower court injunction that would have prohibited further above-ground construction. As a practical matter, this will allow the administration to complete construction before the legality of said action is fully adjudicated.

You might ask, how do we know that an emergency docket ruling was precisely 5-4? In this case, it is because Chief Justice Roberts wrote a dissent that was joined by the three liberals. Early in Roberts’ dissent he writes “[t]hat construction is likely unlawful”; and the majority opinion takes pains to note that “[t]oday, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project.” The legal issues at stake in the SCOTUS opinion are entirely about whether the plaintiffs who sued the government have standing to do so, and hence whether the district court exceeded its authority in granting the injunction.

While I am not a lawyer, I am increasingly convinced that something — although I can’t specify a precise solution — needs to change when it comes to judicial evaluation of whether or not the executive branch is complying with the law. Time and time again, the Trump administration has rather brilliantly exploited a seam in our form of government whose existence I hadn’t previously appreciated: It is all too possible for the executive branch to willingly break the law, without adequate legal remedies available to prevent it.

Mail-In Ballots. This post is already too long, and I imagine this subject will be coming up again in the near future, so for today I’ll be brief. There have been Executive Orders relating to the role of the U.S. Postal Service in delivering mail-in ballots in federal elections, and very recently a final regulation implementing portions of those EOs was promulgated. Many states believe that the rule is unconstitutional, and they seek to enjoin its implementation for the November elections while further litigation continues. This issue already reached the SCOTUS emergency docket once, in an August case called Trump v. California, over dissents from the 3 liberals. At that time, the Court argued that the legal action was premature since it was taken before the final rule was promulgated, so the legal harms to the states were speculative. Now that the rule exists, the district court judge has reaffirmed her previous ruling, and this will likely get back to the SCOTUS emergency docket very shortly.

Political Landscape. I’ll end for today with a brief summary of how the national political landscape looks like on Labor Day, citing Nate Silver’s new midterms model which he has christened FLIPR:

• FLIPR thinks control of the Senate is a genuine tossup, with a 50.6% chance that the Democrats will get to 51 seats. Of course, if they get to exactly 51, then there is some risk that Fetterman, whose approval ratings are far higher among PA Republicans than among PA Democrats, could be induced to switch parties.
• In terms of specific Senate races, FLIPR has Talarico as a mild favorite to flip TX (56-44) but, surprisingly, Sullivan as a mild favorite to hold AK (54-46). FLIPR also likes Jackson’s chances to flip ME (65-35), Brown’s to flip OH (62-38), El-Sayed’s to retain MI (68-32), and the Republican Hinson’s to hold the open seat in IA (65-35). Among longer shots, FLIPR gives the Democrat Hamilton a 20% chance to flip KS, which came as a surprise to me.
• FLIPS thinks the Democrats are heavily favored to take back control of the House, with an average margin of 231-204 and an 82.7% chance of being at 218+. It appears Silver thinks that Republicans have a structural advantage in popular vote terms of about 3% in the House, thanks to gerrymandering and other factors. Having said that, it is certainly possible that the Republicans will lose some of the seats, particularly in TX, that they had gerrymandered in an effort to gain.
• Silver’s tracking average of Trump’s approval / disapproval ratings currently sits at 38.1 – 58.5, which is very close an all-time low for Trump.