I have been going back and forth on whether I think adding justices to the Supreme Court is the right thing to do. But if the court takes the final step of allowing the felon’s executive order on mail in ballots to move forward, I am definitely for enlarging the court. There are many things this court has done that I find reprehensible, but this would be by far the worst. It would irreparably impact the very cornerstone of our democracy — the right to vote.

The order requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) be sent voter lists from each state, and then compile/verify a list of U.S. citizens in each state who are eligible to vote. DHS would undertake the effort to compile the list with the Social Security Administration. We are talking about a list of more than 200 million names. The list would be by state, and then sent to each state. It then directs the U.S. Attorney General to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of “election officials, individuals, and other entities that violate the law by issuing or distributing Federal ballots to ineligible voters.” Then according to the White House fact sheet on the EO, It directs the AG to withhold federal funds from noncompliant states. 

In addition, it involves the Postal Service in determining correct ballots, and instructs ballots it transmits to be “placed in secure ballot envelopes marked as Official Election Mail, with unique Intelligent Mail barcodes, that facilitate tracking. So, one has to question does Homeland Security then track every ballot? It is all insane, meant to limit voting, and scaring people into not voting when we already have a safe, proven system in place. All this being done at the whim of the felon in the White House when it is very clear the Constitution vests the administration of elections with the states. It does allow Congress to pass laws pertaining to elections, but is clear the Executive Branch has NO official role in changing election laws, or carrying out elections. The court must be deaf, blind, and dumb, if they don’t know the Congress has refused to pass the President’s SAVE Act, which would have made some changes. Again, they know this, and if they choose to disregard this, and the constitution, and allow the felon to proceed to implement any part of his EO, they should be impeached. 

It is clear to anyone with half a brain, that all this, even if it were constitutional, would be totally impossible to do in the eight weeks before the midterm elections. In the 2022 midterm elections, nearly 107.7 million valid votes were cast. Currently, is it difficult to determine the exact number of registered voters, as they are registered by state, but it is generally agreed to be approximately 200 million. The idea the Trump administration could in any way try to validate 200 million names in the next eight weeks is totally insane. Again, this is why it is left to the states to do, and it is an ongoing process. Trump filed 60 lawsuits to try to prove invalid votes in the 2020 election, and he lost all 60. Recently, DHS looked at the Nevada voting rolls, and initially claimed there were about 16,000 illegal voters listed. But when it came down to returning the supposed illegal names to Nevada, election officials there received a list with only about 185 names on it. Over the years where Trump has sued, and there have been recounts, there have never been more than a handful of illegal votes and it was clear they made no difference in the results.

Voting by mail is crucial for so many. Even the felon votes by mail. So, if the court were to side with the felon on this, and approve even part of his executive order, they are clearly doing it to screw up our elections, and be complicit with the felon. Based on such an outcome I would lobby the Senate to add justices to the court. The number of justices on the court has changed five times before. Today we have two justices, Alito and Thomas, whose votes you know in advance on any case before it is even heard. We know there are six conservative justices. So, if Democrats take the Senate they could add four more liberal justices to the court for a liberal majority. Even adding three would provide for an even balance which could make for a serious debate on the issues within the court, and final decisions wouldn’t be forgone conclusions as they so often are today. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

President Trump’s favorability is at record lows, dragged down by a reckless and unpopular war, soaring food and gas prices, economic instability and a general sense that he is flagrantly corrupt, more focused on vengeance than governing, flailing and mentally unwell. Assuming the elections take place without interference, Democrats are expected to regain control of the House in November, with odds increasing of a Senate takeover as well. 

In normal times, a rational president facing such headwinds would pursue policies designed to regain public support. But we see no sign of that. Instead, we are seeing a renewed focus on repeating the well-litigated and demonstrably false claims that he won in 2020, and that our elections are rife with voter fraud. He recently devoted most of what was billed as a major speech to the nation on regurgitating these imaginary claims, this time alleging that the Chinese had interfered in the 2020 election, thereby augmenting the pretextual narrative with a national security rationale.  Although it is unclear whether Trump believes any of this himself, he has convinced most of his supporters to believe it, and that serves a very important purpose. Those false claims drove thousands to storm the Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 election, and he appears again to be setting the stage for what he seems willing to do to avoid defeat at the polls.

Since returning to power last year, Trump has systematically fired and replaced personnel at all levels who might not comply with illegal directives and taken other actions to remove the obstacles that constrained him before.  He has thoroughly purged the military and the Department of Justice of career professionals and replaced them with die-hard loyalists who will reliably do his bidding. He has totally neutered the Congress, rendering this once-powerful co-equal and independent branch of government totally subservient. And he has cowed much of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, into a state of complicit compliance.  The Department of Justice has been so thoroughly co-opted by him that he routinely and publicly directs the prosecution of his enemies on tenuous or non-existent grounds and indictments soon follow in virtually every case.

Trump has also militarized America’s streets through the deployment of a federalized National Guard deployed primarily in Democratic cities under the pretext of a crime epidemic that local authorities could not contain. Trump has unleashed a highly aggressive and unaccountable Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) force of masked gunmen ostensibly to round up and deport people who were in the country illegally.  In fact, ICE has acted with such wanton brutality that it has disappeared and summarily deported people, and murdered people, including several American citizens, in broad daylight and on video with no consequences.  These troops, who function almost as independent and unaccountable militias of the president, have terrorized segments of the population and acclimated Americans to a menacing armed presence roaming the streets in a manner that Americans have never experienced before. It is not hard to imagine how these forces could be put to use during the election: to intimidate and suppress the vote in Democratic precincts, to seize voting machines or otherwise interfere with the election process, and/or to provoke chaos and unrest to provide a pretext for the president to contest or nullify the election results.

This is not theoretical. It is telling that Trump’s two top priorities are premised on the big lie about the 2020 election and on creating a pretext for interfering in the upcoming election. He has prioritized legislation called the SAVE Act, which would interfere with states’ rights to administer elections by mandating enhanced voter ID requirements in a manner that would disenfranchise voters, particularly those that tend to vote for Democrats. His other top priority is a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund designed to compensate and reward convicted Jan. 6 rioters who, at Trump’s instigation, ransacked the Capitol, brutally assaulting police officers and hunting members of Congress with the intent of killing them. The rationale for this massive slush fund is the fiction that these convicted felons were innocents unfairly subjected to baseless, politically motivated prosecutions. This fund was so controversial that two Republican senators had blocked the nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general until they received a very dubious written assurance — quickly disavowed by Trump — that the fund would not be deployed.

It is also alarming that Trump repeatedly calls for nationalizing the elections process, despite the Constitution specifically vesting these powers with the individual states, and he has demonstrated that he means business. He has pressured states to turn over confidential voter data and taken punitive measures against the non-compliant, including withholding allocated federal funds.   He has harassed and intimidated state election officials with threats of criminal prosecution for a variety of specious reasons and has sought confidential personal information about these officials. Notably, he recently abolished the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, a watchdog agency established by Congress after January 6 to ensure the integrity of our elections.  And perhaps most disturbing of all, his servile FBI took the unprecedented step of raiding election offices in Atlanta, Georgia to seize and confiscate voter rolls.  There is no reason to believe that he will hesitate to do so again in November.  In fact, he recently stated that he may send ICE and National Guard troops to polling places, and some members of Congress and MAGA influencers are calling for him to do just that.  Under the right circumstances, which would include accusations of voter fraud and chaos at the polls that could easily be provoked or manufactured, he would have the legal authority to do so.

At the same time, Trump has openly mused that the public might prefer a dictatorship and repeatedly hinted that he might seek an unconstitutional third term. At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month, he wore a red cap emblazoned with “Trump 2028”, and just this week, he indicated that he is willing to declare a national security emergency to cancel elections. “Stranger things have happened,” he said, seeming to prepare the public for what might be in store.  Trump has so successfully inured the public and the media to such incendiary and anti-democratic threats that they no longer induce opprobrium or outrage. 

This president has repeatedly demonstrated and flexed his authoritarian impulses, admired dictators, and increasingly signaled a determination to seize control of the upcoming election up to and including cancelling it. He tried to stage a coup once and came very close to succeeding.  This time his actions are increasingly speaking the quiet part out loud. What should alarm anyone paying attention is that the groundwork for Version 2.0 has been very well laid and that, when Trump signals so clearly that he is determined to win by any means necessary, we should believe him.

Peter Pappas is an attorney who served in senior positions in the Obama and Clinton administrations. 

An important event impacting the LGBTQ community will be held on Sept. 12 in Rehoboth Beach, Del. 

The event is a fundraiser for the Washington Blade Foundation. Whether you can join us in person, or just be with us from a distance, I ask you to seriously consider becoming a sponsor of this event. You may ask why should you care, why is this important, and how the Blade Foundation supports the LGBTQ community.

The event will feature an open bar, food catered by the Blue Moon, entertainment, and speeches from Blade staff along with remarks from Rehoboth’s Mayor-elect Susan Stewart and another surprise guest or two. You can buy tickets on Eventbrite; if you’re interested in sponsoring the event, contact Publisher Brian Pitts at [email protected]. 

The Blade Foundation was begun to ensure the history of our community, written in the pages of the Washington Blade, was archived, and never lost. That effort was a success thanks to the support of the DC Public Library. Now the Blade Foundation works to help ensure there will be future LGBTQ journalists working throughout the media, not just for the Blade. By funding interns and fellowships for LGBTQ journalism students, we help make that possible. By helping to fund the international news section of the Blade, the Foundation helps to keep the LGBTQ community around the world connected. In many countries where our community is either still not accepted, or worse, tortured, members of our community living in those places may only get news of their communities by reading the Blade online. 

I know many of you reading this already know, the Washington Blade newspaper has been in existence, and reporting on the LGBTQ community, for more than 56 years. The paper’s reporting is done by those who are part of the community, and that makes a real difference. The paper is proud of its journalists, and the numerous awards they have won. One is Lou Chibbaro Jr., who recently was the subject of a documentary aired on PBS. He, and others like him, report the news honestly, without bias, but with fervor, because they actually live the stories. 

In those 50-plus years since Stonewall, the Blade has been reporting on the progress our community has made. The steps forward, the stumbles, those allies who have worked with us, and those people who have tried to stop us from living our lives as who we were born to be. Again, the news is being reported by members of our own community. It is not others writing about us, but us, writing about ourselves. The Blade is followed by many mainstream media outlets, and stories that first only the Blade covered, ignored by mainstream media, were then picked up and reported garnering the widespread coverage they deserve. The Blade is the best place to find out about what the members of our own community are doing, and what others are doing to, and for, us. 

It is sad that today the Blade has to report we are at a place in history where we are fighting just to keep the strides for equality we have made over the past 50 years. Because of that, it is even more important than ever, that the Washington Blade keeps publishing. Today, the Blade is the only LGBTQ news outlet with a dedicated seat in the White House briefing room. That is important for the Blade, and for all the members of our own community. It is important the Blade be where the action is. 

The Blade’s international coverage helps us in the United States to understand where we can help those in our community who may be suffering and less fortunate, but also to celebrate with those who are even more free in many ways. The recent stories about World Pride in Amsterdam inspire us to fight even harder for our rights here, so we never again have a president who will work to keep our community from being all it can be. That we will never again have a President who threatens the lives of our trans sisters and brothers, threatens their healthcare, and throws our community’s heroes out of our military. Those news stories are important to write, and they often only get written about fully, in the Blade. 

So again, I ask you to consider being a sponsor, and joining us in Rehoboth on Sept. 12. Or if you can’t be in Rehoboth, that you support our work from a distance, and support this important event. The Washington Blade Foundation is a 501c(3) non-profit. So, whether you are a business supporting the community, an individual ally, or a member of the community, please dig deep, and help to support the future of LGBTQ journalism, and future LGBTQ journalists. By doing so, you are supporting the future of the LGBTQ community. You can donate online at bladefoundation.org/donate.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.