Trump Embarrassed as Postal Workers Warn Mail-In Ballot Plan Will Be a “Catastrophe”!

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1:01This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way because there's hope in hard questions. With summer coming to an end, you're going to be spending more time indoors. Get your home ready and save up to 50% off custom window treatments during the Labor Day mega sale at Blinds.com. From room darkening to light filtering shades, finding the perfect fit is easy. Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services. Or DIY with confidence and support every step of your life. You can get a free sample of the product. Right now is your last chance to shop up to 50% off site wide plus huge savings on door busters during the Labor Day sale at Blinds.com. 50 million mail-in ballots hang in the balance as we wait on pins and needles for the United States Supreme Court to make its ruling in the next 48 to 72 hours.

2:03About whether Donald Trump's scheme to use the post office. To deny you and me our mail-in ballots is going to work or not and buried among the 14 different friends of the court who have all filed briefs in the last day. Along with the 22 Democratic States attorneys general who lead the charge along with the lead the state's the lead the state's the lead the state's the lead the state's the lead the state's the lead the state's the lead the state's time that's provided that the citizenship portal that they've never built before and

3:04never used before is going to make it impossible, impossible to deliver mail-in ballots. Right here, postal workers are heard from. They're probably the most important voice about the technicalities and the logistics of what's being proposed. And hopefully it will pierce through to the justices as they consider whether to let Donald Trump effectively eliminate mail-in balloting for the midterms or beyond. I'm Michael Popeye. You know, where you are, you're a legal AF. I'm going to post this. I got the receipts. I'm going to post this brief on legal AF subset for you to read as well. Let me give you the highlights. What's this all about? Trump entered an executive order in March trying to use the post office, have them create a citizenship check portal database that they've never had before. They've never built before. They've never used before and build it at the last minute.

4:05It's not even fully complete or functional or tested as of the moment of this video. First the states to provide citizenship data in order to use mail-in balloting, which they are not obligated to do, which is against the law in many states. Then the portal has got to check against the ballots received from the states. Then the envelopes have to be of a certain format. Then it's all got to get scammed through in batches, huge batches, we're talking about millions of ballots into optical scanners. And then it's got to be sorted and mailed. So we're down to 53 days until the midterms. It is impossible. I just interviewed Democratic attorneys general, including Dana Nestle of Michigan, who said out loud in my interview, it is impossible, impossible for the state of Michigan to comply with this order if the Supreme Court were to pull a fast one and find that it is constitutional.

5:08I don't think there are five votes on the United States Supreme Court to do this for Donald Trump, not mail-in ballots, not that's been going on since the Civil War. Let me read to you from excerpts from the ones that are in the know, the postal workers. Now, we already have a whistleblower postal worker in the management deep inside the Trump administration that already submitted anonymously a 14 page single space whistleblower complaint to Senator Blumenthal. It made its way to judge Tom Wany and Boston, who's handling the underlying case. And that whistleblower said out loud, this system has been designed to fail. The system of Donald Trump has purposely been designed to fail to reject ballots, to reject mail-in ballots, to send back tens of thousands, if not millions of ballots back to the states and deny the right to vote to people. That's the whistleblower. This is not a whistleblower. This is the postal union.

6:08Here's what they have to say. Let's start on page. Let's start with their index. Their index alone tells you everything you need to know about the arguments that are now in the record before the United States Supreme Court. One, the postal service is obligated by the Constitution and the Postal Reorganization Act to deliver all mail. All mail. Remember, the mail carrier is a credo, neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night. She'll stop the mail carrier from making his appointed rounds. Right? Okay. Two, only Congress may grant the postal service the right to refuse mail delivery and they haven't. Three, voting by mail is a critical postal function. They've been doing it since the Civil War. The final rule of the post of the of the postal service. Remember, these are the postal workers cannot be implemented by the November 2026 election.

7:13It's not feasible. It's not possible. Then lastly, her end launch of the ballot portal will potentially cause catastrophic problems for the public and mail service. There's two of their brief and little side note, amicus briefs briefs, not of the parties, but a friends of the court that are accepted by the Supreme Court like these. And there's 14 of them here. The Democratic National Committee, the NAACP, the National Security leaders, a group of elected officials, the League of Women voters, the League of United Americans, you'll find in the Supreme Court rulings. Yes, they got the briefs of the parties, but sometimes they find a novel argument or a case or an analysis that they like or a data point, a fact, historical fact in the record. And it seeps into and influences the resulting majority opinion of the United States Supreme

8:15Court. So these amicus briefs matter. Here's what it says to kick off the brief summary of argument page two. The final rule violates the postal services, constitutional and statutory duty to deliver mail, not containing contraband to the designated address. The Congress alone has the power to legislate exceptions. The final rule would likely cause catastrophic wholesale, non-delivery of mail to hundreds of thousands of voters. An enormous number of postal clerks in facilities nationwide would be needed to implement the restrictions on mail ballot acceptance. These clerks cannot realistically be trained in the operation of the ballot portal in the short time before the November elections. The hurried launch of this unprecedented system that odds with normal workflow will inevitably grind the operation of the postal system to a halt, delaying or preventing timely delivery of mail ballots.

9:16The final rule therefore threatens the postal services basic function to deliver mail to addresses without censorship of its contents on page three. They talk about the 250th birthday of the post office founded by Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general in 1775. On page four over to page five, they talk about Congress alone has the power to determine which mail is not going to be delivered, not the executive branch. They talk on page five about voting by mail has always been a critical postal function. The postal service has moved ballots through the mail since the Civil War when several states introduced absentee voting by mail for military personnel. And they did it through the COVID-19 pandemic as well, all successfully. They then say that the final rule cannot feasibly be implemented before the election.

10:23They gave examples of why this would not work. Page six, after proposing a radical rule that entirely changes the postal services policies and process for accepting outgoing ballots, the postal service officially published a final rule. The final rule makes mail piece designed best practices for outgoing ballots mandatory and requires every state to register the recipients of their mail ballots with the post office in a federal ballot mail portal. If the state does not register in the ballot portal where it doesn't match portal data, clerks are required to reject the ballot for mailing. These clerks are part of this union. Moving on to page 12 of the of their filing implementation of the ballot portal is not feasible. It's unlike anything the postal service has undertaken before, whether it's workable, not only depends on programming, but on the policies and procedures clerks are expected to follow in using the portal to verify ballots, you know, the training.

11:26Where is the training? Those details are opaque. The only information clerks have received about the ballot portal are stand up talks about court injunctions. They have little information about the postal service. It has been told that the portal and training materials are still in development, still in development. But we're 55 days to the to the to the election. So a portal that's not ready yet, not tested, never been run before is going to be used just in time for the midterms. Page 15 hurried launch of the ballot portal will likely cause catastrophic problems. People, employees have reason to fear that the postal service will rush them to implement an incomplete procedure for verification that does not work. A slap dash approach to the ballot portal normally would be unacceptable as the inevitable problems with the portal reveal themselves, while it's being used, the likely result is that ballots will not be verified and therefore will be refused.

12:27And that will easily prevent timely delivery of hundreds of thousands of ballots. I think it's millions of ballots. I think they're being kind here. The postal services claims that there will be no consequential effects of the ballot portal simply do not comport with a reality or all mail, including election mail continues to slow down. And they ended this way. The United States Postal Service is the best way to vote by mail in the world. It has a duty to ensure that ballots are accepted and delivered by the postal service to their addresses. The hurried implementation of the final rule will prevent this from happening. The application for a stay should be denied. Now when I said at the top of this video that I expect the ruling by the Supreme Court, now having got all the briefs in on Wednesday, I expect it could be as early as Friday, could be Saturday or Sunday or Monday.

13:27You're going to want to stay close to legal AF. You're going to want to stay close to our content and our updates here and on sub-stack, because this is a fast moving story and this impacts your ability to vote by mail. As I said, I just spent an entire day with the Democratic attorney general, 15 of them in Detroit. And all we talked about was voter protection and what they're prepared to do, not just to protect the mail imbalance, but election day voting, early voting, the vote counting the certification of the vote and 60 days later or so, the, the, the seating, the seating of individual members of Congress and the Senate and other places. And this group is ready with lawsuits all the way to the end so everybody is sat in their elected seat. And I've got content going up yesterday and today and tomorrow, my interviews with these attorneys general. Here's, here's the survival kit that they gave me for you. Vote early, vote as early as possible so that you have time if there's any problems.

14:32That's one, if you're going to vote by mail, consider picking up the mail ballot at your local election office and consider dropping it off yourself in a collection box, a secure collection box that's been established by your locality. You can trust that. If you're going to have, if you're going to mail it, then track your ballot. There's ways to track it. They give you a tracking number. And if you see it's not arrived a day or so before the election, when it should have, then go back into the election office and vote a provisional ballot. So if you're ballot, your mail in ballot never arrives. The provisional ballot can be converted into your ballot, which means you have voted. These are the things you have to do. And if you see, if you see something, say something to your attorney general in your state, if you see anything suspicious or interfering with your right to vote or intimidating your right to vote or others, say something to the attorney general until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of legal AF mean either.

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