Whistleblower warns Trump’s USPS plot could toss millions of ballots

0:00Nothing beats tradition, like weekly game nights at Mom's house. And Toastitos, crafted with masa made the traditional way, starting with whole corn kernels, with flavors worth gathering around, like a hint of lime and Mexican street corn, and no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives, that's the Toastitos way. Bring Toastitos to your next game night, and you'll be winning either way. Toastitos, tradition matters. Everybody, it's Rachel Maddo here. Forgive me popping in deer feed like this. But I want to tell you that more than a dozen of us from MSNOW are going to be in Texas on Saturday, September 26th. I'm going to be there. Lauren Soudon will be there. So will Jen Socky and Stephanie Rool and Ali Velshi and Chris Hayes and Jacob Soberoff and Simone Sanders-Tanzand and and and and. A whole bunch of us are all going to be there in Texas. Tickets started just over 30 bucks each. It's in Arlington, just outside Dallas. There's a ton to do there. If you come, you'll get to meet all of us.

1:00You'll also get to meet everybody else there. All these other great people from our great MSNOW community. We'd love to see you. And if you buy a ticket to the Texas event, you will get access to our new MSNOW membership free for a year. We're really excited about it. It launches later this summer. You'll be able to talk with me, talk with some of the other hosts. But tickets for Texas are on sale now. You can learn more at MSNOW slash together. Hope to see you in Texas. The founders of our country would be a poll that how you treat people here with the stain and with your attempts to make it more difficult to vote. Shame on you if you do this today. Texas tries messing with polling places. They're slashing polling places to disenfranchise the voters that they don't want them to have heard. Tonight the backlash to this stunning power grab, MSNOW's brand new characterization of the pivotal Texas center race and the Republican campaign to scare their way back to power.

2:06They're coming for your money, your gas powered car, your air conditioner, everything you love, your private health insurance, and they're going to take it from you. Period end of story. Then Senator Richard Blumenthal on his stunning whistleblower report, alleging the postal service is defying court orders on voting by mail. And hopefully there will be no corrupt mail imbalance. But all ends starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris A's. It is election night. Tuesday, just 63 days from November 3rd. We've got some voting happening in the state of Massachusetts. We've got two pieces of news from the state of Texas. First, Massachusetts where polls have just closed in that state. We are waiting for results from a bunch of races tonight, including probably the biggest the Marquis Senate primary between incumbent Democrat Ed Marquis and Congressman Seth Moul. A paper looks like many of the primaries we've seen before the cycle. Senator Marquis, who is 80, is seeking another six year term in the Senate, representative

3:06Moulton, who turns 48 next month, is arguing for generation change among other things. Unlike many of the similar contests we've seen these year, much of the progressive left, including Bernie Sanders, who is more an AOC, are actually backing Marquis instead of his younger challenger. More on that race later in the show. But I want to turn down to Texas, where the Senate race there between Democrat James Teller, who go and Republican Ken Paxton, is tightening and Republicans of the state are working hard to try to rig the system to avoid Texas going blue in a statewide election for the first time in 32 years. Tonight we can announce that our MS now internal elections desk, which has been characterizing that race as lean Republican, is now shifting it to toss up from lean Republican to toss up. Now, the election desk takes all this incredibly seriously. They spend a lot of time like thinking through all this and modeling. It's not a decision that our experts make likely lightly. We're going to be joined in a moment by our director of elections and analytics to run through how they came to that today. Everyone watching this, I'm sure, understands the barrage, the sort of Lucy in the football

4:08quality of blue Texas, people that have been thinking or hoping Democrats will win and have been left wanting now for over three decades. I mean, it really is an incredible run. This shift really does reflect the dynamic on the ground as our elections team understands it. And there's a number of factors at play. Perhaps the most significant is the disparity that we've covered quite a bit here in just candidate quality. The Republican nominee, State Attorney General Ken Paxton, who defeated incumbent Senator John Corden in the primary, is a particularly bad candidate. He is comically scandal-ridden, including multiple past indictments. Many Republican office holders really don't like the guy and have said so publicly. He was never convicted for any of those things he was indicted for. He recently had a divorce that his wife filed on quote, biblical grounds. And it's provided an opportunity for Democrat James Tarrico to potentially become the first Democrat to win Texas statewide in 30 years. He previewed some of his closing message to MSNOW earlier today. You've got a clear choice between the most corrupt politician in Texas who has become

5:11a multi-millionaire on a government salary, who now owns 15 homes, who has sold us out at every turn. And then in our campaign, you have a candidate with a track record of serving the public. Perhaps because of that messaging, Tarrico has a fundraising event, at least for now. Times are very vocally starting to panic about the money disparity in this race. The consensus among the Republican Party elite seems to be that this race is Donald Trump's mess, and therefore he needs to be the one to clean it up. Trump, after all, is the one who intervened, to boost Paxton over corning in the primary, and had he not done that and boy did that tick off a lot of folks. Had he not done that, corning almost certainly would have won the nomination? Probably, we'll see. But it's safe to say that this race would not be considered a toss up right now. You'd have an incumbent Republican with a proven track record in the state. But that's not where we are. Trump interfered, interfered, and now Republicans basically want Tim to own and pay for that

6:14decision. Specifically through the hundreds of millions of dollars that he is currently sitting on, through his Super PAC MAGA ink. As SEMFOR put it today, quote, Republicans are counting on President Donald Trump's cavalry to carry a pen back into victory, but it hasn't come yet. That spoke spin for the Super PAC told SEMFOR it is nothing to share on its spending decisions. You can tell, Republicans are starting to sweat. We are certainly hopeful that the President and his team, MAGA ink, will be engaged in some of these races and get some space that are incredibly expensive. I'm sorry, you know, have you talked to the President about that money? And, you know, obviously it's a big concern to both of you. We, it is, and we continue to weigh in. There's no sense bubble wrapping it. We've got a race in Texas. We in the Senate don't have the money budgeted for Texas. We need help for the President, from the President. President says he has $850 million in his campaign accounts.

7:15That's a lot of jack. Well, yes, it is. I'm sort of interesting to think about how it's there and why it's there since he can't run again and also all the corporate donations. He's been soliciting in apparent exchange for official government policy. Now, one reason Trump might be hesitant to drop any money, of course, is that well, he doesn't like giving money to other people. He likes it going to himself. But also he consistently displays a preference to cheat rather than actually win. According to an anonymous Federal whistleblower in contact with Democratic Senator Richard Blumethal Connecticut, who's going to join me right at this table later in the hour, the Trump administration could be working with the USPS to prevent thousands upon thousands of Americans from casting their mail in ballots. Basically, if just one ballot in a batch of 10,000, according to the whistleblower complaint, is flagged by the Postal Services having discrepancy, say a voter recently got married, changed her last name. The entire batch, the other 9,999 ballots, would not be mailed out. And a rages voter suppression scheme, clearly unlawful.

8:18That's not all. Today, in Tarrant County, Texas, over the shouts of citizens and protesters, the commissioners court of Tarrant County voted on party lines, three Republicans, two Democrats, to close nearly 100 polling stations in a county that common will harass one by 26 points. There are 316 polling places in that county, more than 2 million people. They voted today to close 92 of them. They say it's about the budget two months before Election Day. Seems to me, a pretty transparent effort to make it harder for people in the Fort Worth Metro-Airdivote knowing that Fort Worth numbers are going to be determinative for any statewide Democratic victory. And to suppress support for Tallarico, in what is now a toss-up race? Voting is a right, not a privilege. Making citizens jump through hoops to vote is the kind of cowardice engaged in by people who don't think they can earn our votes. The founders of our country would be a pull at how you treat people here with this stain and with your attempts to make it more difficult to vote.

9:20One of the things about elections is, and sometimes I'm talking to people, they're like, what's the inside scoop? There's no inside scoop. Everyone's basically got the same numbers, okay? Like everyone knows about the same. There's some inside information in the big campaigns, but generally, it's exactly what it looks like. The Republican Party is looking at the same data and the same polling that we are. And they're taking action to affect the outcomes of number third. That is because the fundamentals in this race, as well as races across the country, right now, favorite Democrats up and down the ballot. Again, please for now. Kabir Khan is a director of elections and analytics here at MSNow, and he joins me now. Great to have you here your first time. Thanks for having me. You've been a huge addition to our team here. I've really enjoyed listening to you and hearing what I have to say, the rigor and precision with which you've undertaken your work here. So just first take me through you guys have moved this. I mean, some level, right, we should just be clear like, however we characterize the race, what happens is going to happen. That's true. Let's be clear. What we're saying is that Texas is a toss up today. That's the current state of play. This is not a prediction for what's going to happen in November.

10:21What we're saying is we've proceeded very cautiously with our race ratings. We've had Texas at lean Republican basically since the primary runoff, even though as you pointed out, Paxton has a bunch of flaws in candidate quality issues. But Texas has a fundamental partisan gravity and a baseline heavily Republican partisanship. That along with its recent electoral history, let us to think that Paxton probably still has an edge. But I would say at this point, there are a bunch of indicators and it's not just polling that not only is this very competitive, it's a 50-50 race right now. We can run through some of those reasons that went into the analysis. Yeah. Let's talk about just where Texas is. We just put up that graphic, right? So Texas tends to be about 10 points, 11 points, to the right of the country, right? So in 2016, Hillary Clinton won by two points nationally and Trump carried Texas by nine points. That gives you that sort of an example. You need a national environment before you even get to candidate quality. You're going to need a national environment that's going to even put it remotely in play.

11:22Yeah, that's exactly how we think about it. And all science point to the national environment being very favorable to Democrats, whether it's the generic ballot polling, whether it's the turnout gap, whether it's voter registration trends. So right now polling averages have that national vote at a round of margin of D plus six. In 2018 during that blue wave, it was about D plus eight. And what you often see is that in the stretch of the campaign, that out party margin grows slightly. That's interesting. That's not going to necessarily be true, but it's not a law of graphical for midterm years. Let's say we're in that range, D plus six, D plus eight, when the votes are finally cast. That moves Texas, if it swings uniformly with the rest of the country, into being a single digit race. And we're kind of in the territory of the Beto or Roque, or Roark, three point lost to Ted Cruz in 2018. And when races are that close, that's really when things like candidate quality can make a big difference. This is sort of an important, I mean, we say this on the side to show all the time, but it's worth taking a second here where it's like, there are structural conditions and there's race dynamics, right?

12:23So like the structural conditions matter a ton. And then the race dynamics matter a ton. And those race dynamics, candidate quality fundraising, a really good campaign can get you like a point or two points or three points, right? But like, you know, the best democratic statewide campaign in Wyoming is just going to have a really hard time because of what the partisan fundamentals are. The fundamentals of the state, and frankly, these days our elections are so partisan and so nationalized. And those national conditions are going to play a really big role even in Texas. What do you think about the candidate quality? And I want to ask on, I mean, this is a subjective measure, but one of the things that struck me of watching Paxton and Talleriko take away the scandals and all that stuff. We're just talking these people's communicators. You know, Paxton's sort of a legend in Texas politics. He's been there forever. He's not a particularly gifted communicator. I mean, the stature he's achieved is through being a very deft sort of politician inside Republican party politics, but he hasn't had to do what he has to do now ever really in

13:26his career. Yeah. I mean, he was the choice of the Republican like conservative base. He's viewed as a fighter. He's a known commodity. He has a lot of baggage, but he got the Donald Trump staff of approval. I think it's inarguable that he's weaker in a general election than the incumbent John Corning would have been the polling at the time was showing that. So whether it's communication things or scandals, this is really close. I just want to say one other thing though. Partisanship is a hell of a drug and negative partisanship is a really big force in our election. People basically saying, I don't love either side. I'm going to vote for the lesser of two evils. This campaign is going to be heated. It's probably going to be pretty nasty. Both sides are going to try to paint the other one as extreme and out of touch. That argument may resonate with a lot of conservative voters in Texas, including independence. Those are the people that Alarico has to convince to essentially cross over. Yeah. When you look at the Texas race, the Ohio race, Sher Brown and John Houston, the Iowa

14:26race with Ashley Henson and Josh Cherrick. To a certain extent, the Alaska race will let us very dynamic, very different dynamics because that state is so different. The Republican is battling downhill. They're in a sword fight downhill because they just have to get back to partisan fundamentals to win. That's exactly right. In a sense, it's remarkable that we're talking about. That is the set of control being competitive. If we had this conversation. You're a go-it team. I mean, a year ago, you and I, I think, both said it's just not going to happen because of the terrain and the fundamentals of these states that are the types of places Democrats need to win this year. What's remarkable is that the conditions and the specific candidates and dynamics of these races have evolved and changed to the point that all of these are in play. What I want to say about Texas and it now being firmly a toss-up is, before, Democrats basically had to sweep the toss-ups to get to 51 seats and Senate control. Texas opens another door and gives them some wiggle room. If they lose a seat like Iowa or a seat like Michigan or even Maine, the options to Senate

15:29control still remain open with Texas. A really, really, really good point. Let's do this again because there's a lot of race to talk about. That sounds great. Fabericana, who is running our election session right now. Have you here? Both of the candidates who've just been discussing are actually holding rallies two night right now in Texas. We have MS now, National reporter Rosa Flores, who joins me from San Antonio, Texas. We're Democratic nominee James Telerego. He's currently holding his campaign event, Rosa. What's it like down there? Chris, there's so much I wish I could tell you, but I want to focus on one thing because I think it's so telling not what people are saying, but what people are not saying. And here's what I mean. I've been in Curville, Texas, which is very deep red with Telerego, and also here in San Antonio. It's a really good thing, but I think the exact same thing that if you used to drive in the Texas Hill country, in the rural areas, you'd see these giant Trump signs, giant Trump flags that now I'm hearing from multiple people.

16:29You don't see them as much. You'd see them on your drive from Houston to San Antonio, from San Antonio to the Hill country. And let me tell you something. Not from Texas, Chris. And we are very prideful. Our pride is really big. And they're the same, the bigger the hair, the closer to Jesus, I'm clearly not doing that today with my flat hair. But it just says something about what is happening, the fact that these signs are not out there. So I've been asking some of the supporters here that I've been talking to, and they tell me that these mega supporters are feeling the same economy that you and I are feeling. They are pumping gas and it's high. They're buying groceries and those are high. And so they're scaling back in their pride to show that they're mega or that they're trumpers. Now of course, the big question is, how are they going to vote come November? I talked to one gal today who told me that her mega dad, and this is her saying this

17:30her mega dad is going to vote for James Telerego. Now he won't say it publicly, she told me, because that would be a no-no in Texas if you're in a deep red county to be publicly saying that you're going to vote for James Telerego. But that some people are going to vote their conscience. Now how many of those are out there? I don't know Chris, but I have found this fascinating in my stop both in Curveau and here in San Antonio. All right, Rosa Flores, San Antonio where James Telerego has an event today. Thanks for that dispatch. I want to bring in Jake Triller, a life from a Paxen event at a Baptist Church in Willow Park, Texas. Jake, you've been covering Paxen and what we're seeing in Tarrant County today with that three to two vote to close a bunch of polling places. Yeah, Chris, let me just quickly paint a really interesting juxtaposition that me and my colleagues on the ground here in Fort Worth, Texas have seen today. Earlier today, we were outside the Tarrant County courthouse where there are hundreds of protesters, mainly Democrats, gathered and then went inside and protested and testified, saying that this slashing of one third of the voting locations across the country from

18:33316 to 224 slashing across the county of Tarrant, saying that that was voter disenfranchisement, saying that particularly targets voters of a certain types of community socioeconomic status, racial disparities, and that this is something they're not going to stand by. They mobilized, they showed up, protesting in strong numbers. For hours, they were testifying outside of the courthouse and inside of the courthouse. But two, me and my colleagues walked a couple of blocks down to talk to some Trump supporters seeing how they were feeling about Paxton. I cannot describe enough how different the enthusiasm level quite honestly was. We talked to multiple people who voted Republican at different points in their life who said they were either supporting Tallarico or they were going to sit out of this race. Chris, I talked to one person who said they voted for Trump in 2024, 2020, 2016. Three time Trump supporter said they can't stomach it to go vote for a Democrat, but they're going to sit at home this election and not go vote for Paxton. Those are the really telling voters there. And I'll just say this in general, the big question that we're waiting on to understand

19:34is what exactly does a big John Cornyn fan and supporter do? We know that Paxton B. Cornyn in the primary, Cornyn endorsed and said that he was going to support the Republican ticket. But also in the past week, he's called Paxton Lazy. He said he's a bad campaigner. The question that Paxton is trying to get into and figure out is what is a Cornyn voter going to do? Are they going to sit on the couch or are they going to go and vote? And if they do go and vote, are they going to vote for Paxton or Tallarico? This is one of three events for Paxton today. He's trying to solidify some of those answers. All right, Jake trailer, great dispatch from Texas. Thank you so much for that coming up. Ali Vell, she's going to join us with the latest Massachusetts. You see those vote totals rolling into the bottom of the screen. But first, the Republicans do have a plan to scare their base to turn out the vote. That's next. Hey everybody, it's Rachel Maddo here. I wanted to tell you that more than a dozen of us from MSNOW are going to be in Texas on Saturday, September 26th. I'm going to be there. Lauren Sodonna will be there.

20:35So we'll Jen Socky. A whole bunch of us are all going to be there in Texas. Tickets started just over 30 bucks each. And if you buy a ticket, you will get access to our new MSNOW membership free for a year. Tickets for Texas are on sale now. You can learn more at ms.nail slash together. Hope to see you in Texas. Back here on this election night, the August polling has been brutal for Republicans. As basically every race has moved in Democrats' direction with almost no exceptions. I mean, you're even seeing these sort of house races that shouldn't be frontline races, like pop up like this one. Republican Anna Polina Luna is very pro-Trump mega-right wing Republican, her seat in Florida, a new Democratic sponsor poll. So this is a Democratic internal. You know, take that great insult. But Shows Luna losing previous polls have shown Luna head. And again, I doubt that will be what we see on election night, but just that being anywhere in the realm of competitive is like a real warning side.

21:37Now, there's also lots of reasons I think that August polls might be overseeing Democrats' chances. I've read some relatively persuasive arguments that those polls tend to be better. We should also say that Republicans, you know, they're not idiots. They know what they're doing when it comes to winning elections. They have a plan. And it's very straightforward and simple. You're going to take billions of dollars of rich people's money. In some cases, like hundreds of millions from individual rich people, Elon Musk and others, and spend it on abs that absolutely hammer the Democrats for being essentially communist traders. This is going to be a midterm unlike any other. The question that voters across the nation have to answer this fall is whether we're going to turn the greatest nation in the history of the world over to communism and big government socialism as radical left Democrats insist. The barbarians are now inside the gate. Again, this is not just logic, to the strategy. In the key battleground states, this could be an hour of just succusting, discussing.

22:39Republicans just need their voters to step back to the partisan fundamentals in order to carry the day. Claire McCaskel is a former Democratic center from Missouri, now an MSNOW, political analyst, Nikki McCann Ramirez, politics reporter for Rolling Stone, and they joined me now. I mean, you know this as well as anyone. I do. I haven't been a senator in Missouri having watched the kind of partisan realignment in American politics in which, you know, if you go back and you read it's very funny, if you go back and you look at like cook political report from like the 88 race, it's like every state's a toss up. You've got these like, it's not just like people are marking, well, that's D, that's R, that's red, that's blue. Like now our politics are so sorted. What do you think, do you think A, that's an accurate characterization of the Republican strategy and how effective the eating is going to be? I think it's an accurate characterization. I think it remains to be seen how successful it will be. One thing we have learned in these elections, and by the way, this isn't the first time this has happened, you don't have to have the most money to win. You just have to have enough. Say more about that. What do you mean? Well, if you have enough to get your message out.

23:40If you have enough to let voters get to know you. If you have enough to execute a strategy of moving your voters to the polls, then you can win even if the other side outspins you by two or three times. You can see it in primaries all over the country this year. I think there's a, I'm drawing a diminishing return thing here. I can't see that. Like each marginal dollar over a certain amount, it seems to me almost starts to get wasted. You know, like I think we saw that in primaries for these tens of millions of dollars coming at a certain point they stopped being particularly effective. And the other thing that I think is important here is if the Democrats have discipline about staying on message, about people's costs and the realities in their lives, and they point out who's paying for all these ads. Right. The people who are paying for all these ads trying to tell you that we're not trying to get your health care or trying to somehow become communist. They are the very people that have controlled the government. It's the crony capitalism. It's the stuff that's keeping you from being able to feed your families right now.

24:44You know, that's really well said. And Nikki, we did a piece last night about this sort of what I find so insidious about dark money, right, which is they don't want you to know who's paying for it, right? So it's this totally disingenuous thing. And when you go back and you look at when Elon Musk made his foray a year ago in the Wisconsin race, right, it wasn't just that he gave a lot of money. It was also like, hey, look at me on Elon Musk and people that, I mean, people did not like that, right? So there's also a question, I think, for Democrats of how much you can connect that big money to this sort of populist message of taking on big money. Oh, of course, they absolutely need to. And Senator McCaskill is completely right. The biggest hurdle for Democrats here is not taking the bait. Of course, Republicans want to talk about socialism, insure law and communism. They can't talk about immigration because Trump theoretically fixed the immigration problem. So if you say immigration's bad, you're going against the president. You can't talk about the economy and affordability as a Republican because obviously the affordability crisis is a hoax invented by Democrats. You can't talk about tech because tech is good, data centers are good.

25:44So what can Republicans default back to? Well, it's that bread and butter. It's your evil. But to that quote from how Speaker Mike Johnson, that was the exact same argument they made in 2024. And this is no longer 2024. The landscape has completely changed. This president is injecting himself into these races. He is making the argument about himself and his performance. So even as Republicans are going to try and push this narrative to bring the races back to culture war issues. Right, it's a good point. Trump is going to bring it back to himself. Yes, if you want to run against the extreme, it's always going to be him because no one can wrench attention the way Trump can. And I think if you're a Republicans and you can get the guy to shut up. Well, you want, they won't. You can't, but it's like, please don't do anything. And if you could, that would, you know, but I mean, we're going to see this midterm convention where he's going to speak both nights. The other thing I thought of you and I saw this because I think about, you know, when you're in these contested races where the money's coming from, he's sitting on the $400

26:44million in one account, $450 million another Kennedy said he's $850. And he's only going to cut ads if it's about his record, of course. He will only make it about him. He won't make it about the candidates. He won't make it about a message that will work. He will only make it about him. And you know, here's the thing. We don't have to connect the dots as to who's paying for the ads. You know why? Because people will believe it. That these are big money billionaires. If all of a sudden, if the news starts saying of, you know, $200 million in pack money is coming into Texas, they're not going to think that came from mom and dad next door. They're giving $5 or $10. They're going to know these are these big billionaires that set behind them at the inaugural that he's getting rich from that his family is grifting off of. So there really is a perfect storm for the Democrats to thwart this message that is going to be funded by billionaires behind the dark curtain. And your point there too is just that, you know, everyone, most people who are the president are mature enough politically to understand like, do whatever, say what they have to about

27:45me to win the race, right? Like they get it. I mean, there was true George W. Bush was true to Brock Les Bonds. I stay, they would call me, I'll come if you need me. But stay away. And also say whatever you need to say about it. That is not the case in Donald Trump. No, no, no. It's like, you are, John Houston is not going to be able to be like, you know what I actually think Trump screwed up on this without getting a lot of anger from him. No, he, the notion to him that voters won't thank him that candidates would reject him. It just doesn't compute for him. And I think it speaks more to how isolated he's becoming, how the information landscape he existed in is not one that allows him to internalize that reality that the decision he's making or falling on the heads of the candidates that he said, you and I have talked about this. Primaries, it's very easy to turn out the very active base. And that's all he really cares about. Absolutely, cares about. And we talk a lot about MAGA ink and how they're deciding to spend money and allocate money.

28:45The races they've chosen so far, Darlene Graham. I mean, they're spending on 400 million. They've spent, they've spent none of it except for 800,000 on Darlene Graham, which is driving the Republicans, absolutely nuts, who are currently engaged in a game, a very public game of chicken. You see it with- Other trolling it. They are. They're basically saying, you, you, you, you broke it. You broke it. You broke it. You gave his pass and you now have to pay. No, we're showing up to the midterm conference. Yeah, Nikki McCann, Ramirez, Claire McCaskill. Thank you both. Great to have you both here. Come back. Don't go anywhere. We got another person in the room, Ali Valshi, live the big board with the latest numbers from Massachusetts. It's next. We got some breaking news. The AP projects that Democratic Senator Ed Markey has won re-nomination in Massachusetts to feeding a primary challenge from Congressman Seth Molten. Let's chuck in with Ali Valshi, anchor of the 11th hour and the chief data reporter from us now. Ali, does 3% in and it's, it's decided already.

29:47Usually when you have this money votes remaining, you'll wait a little bit, but this thing is so on pace for a, for a marquee victory that the Associated Press has projected that Ed Markey will win at the moment. He's running 74, 25. These actually the proportion of these numbers have been the same. All evening, it's not really shifting. You can see all the towns that have been won by him, none have been won by Seth Molten. We've seen these challenges of younger candidates against older candidates. The unusual part here is that they're both progressive, but Markey's more progressive than Seth Molten. Markey has been in Congress for, between Congress and the Senate, 48 years, Seth Molten is 47 years old. This is another version of a story that we've been seeing. Let me take you to a couple of interesting house races. One I was just looking into, we don't, we got voting here. This is the first time we've seen this. This is Richard Neal. Incomment, 1% in is at 42% Jeremy Whelan at 57.7%. This is a typical challenge from the left coming in against Richard Neal. Everyone watches very carefully because every few weeks we see in incumbent going down

30:51to defeat. Let's take a look at the fifth. This is Catherine Clark. She's got two competitors, but as you can see, she's at the moment running quite far ahead. That's Diana Pressley. Let's go up here. Just pull out here and I can get to 8. There we go. 8. All right. This is the eighth district. Once again, Stephen Lynch. Interesting story. Only 34 Democrats who voted against the ACA. He's the only one left in the house, by the way. He also voted for the Lincoln Riley Act, which has really come damaging for a lot of Democrats. Very little of the race in here right now, but he's got a challenger from the left Patrick Roth and at the moment, this is a very tight race. Yeah, I think if there's one possible upset of an incumbent and particularly from the left, this, that would probably be the one that we'll see tonight. We will keep our eyes on that. I'll leave Elshie. I'm glad you're my man. Thank you. Come, Senator Richard Blumenthal and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Trump's plan to use the Pulsell service to cause election chaos. So both be here right after this break.

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32:52Podcasts. Defying court orders to work behind the scenes, even though they're enjoined, on Donald Trump's unlawful, unconstitutional executive order attacking Melanboa. So in the report, which was published by Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, the anonymous government employee warned the, quote, risky and haphazard implementation of Trump's order could lead to a quote, catastrophic failure, which could derail the midterm elections.

33:57The whistleblower also alleged the USPS has implemented a 0% failure rate, saying, quote, if the ballots are submitted in large volume batches, if anyone ballot in the batch cannot be verified against the portal, that's the new database they're creating, all ballots in that batch will be rejected. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to USPS, and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the portal because, for example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they've moved, then USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well. Fred House responded the report, saying, quote, the process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for the USPS, since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail barcodes for a wide variety of large customers. Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent and honest elections. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democratic Connecticut, published the report on behalf of the whistleblower, Phil Wiser is the attorney general of Colorado, that's one of several all-male ballot states,

35:00and he recently joined a coalition of 24 other states in filing a lawsuit to block Trump's executive order. We should note Wiser's also the Democratic nominee in the gubernatorial election there, and they both join me now. Good to have you, gentlemen, both here. Let me start with the whistleblower report. One thing I noted in the White House's response, there was no denial that the USPS is working on implementing this despite a court. They denied that they were getting it wrong, but that does seem to me one of the main points the whistleblower made is that when you're enjoying, you're enjoying. It is one of the main points, and the attorney general made that point in the lawsuit that they have filed. First and foremost, Chris, I want to give a lot of credit to this whistleblower because it takes guts to come forward and to whistleblower aid that is representing him. What he reveals is not only that the White House is breaking the law overtly, but for the first time using the postal service as an online gatekeeper with a system that screens those ballots and then, in effect, disqualifies individual ballots based on some

36:06discrepancy, the name, the barcode, any tiny discrepancy, and the whole batch is thrown back to state officials. Now, the interesting thing and the outrageous part of it is that this online system is constructed in a way that it designed to fail. Failure is not a bug. It's a feature. Right. So, it's sabotaging the system, which is malignly designed in the first place. I mean, I was sitting at a desk just like this back when the Affordable Care Act portal launched, and that was not designed to fail. In fact, it was designed with the best of intentions and a ton of money and extremely high stakes politically, and it didn't work, right? So, like, imagine even if the best of intentions were being brought to bear here. Let me play for you, Attorney General, what Mike Johnson said in responses with Sublutter's report, which is basically anyone who's opposed to this executive order has something to hide because they want the wrong people to vote.

37:07Take a listen. The idea about the Postal Service, I mean, the idea that they should be involved to make sure that there are valid votes being mailed and registered in cash, should not be a controversial notion. Every time there's a move to try to do this, Democrats throw fit or follow lawsuit. I mean, you should ask yourself, what about the motivation? If you don't want a free and fair election, you should be questioned. And instead of asking Republicans about that, you should ask Democrats who are holding all this stuff up. I'm asking you, why are you holding it up? I think Mike Johnson needs a refresher, of course, on the Constitution. It's the power of the states, and I'm quoting from the Constitution, to decide the time, the place, and the manner of our elections. Colorado does mail ballots to everyone. It's a gold standard to make it safe, easy, and secure to vote. We have the second highest rate of voting in the United States. People in Colorado like having their ballots early. They can mail them back. They can put them in a drop box. They can vote in person.

38:07This is our sovereignty we're talking about. Our decision, the president has no power under the Constitution to do this. His effort to use the Post Office as an instrument to interfere with elections is the lawless. It's also dangerous right now, because we're on the eve of this election. We literally are ready to mail out these ballots, and they're trying to talk about these requirements that I don't know if they can implement. We're worried about what it would mean. We've got a court order to protect our elections. That's why we're fighting so hard. You know, one of the things that unnerved me about the whistleblower complaint as well is that, you know, the USPS, obviously there's presidential appointees, but it should be a fairly independent entity, and not the play thing of what, to me, is a manifestly unlawful and dangerous attempt to sort of subvert and sabotage the election. But it seems like it really is coming from the top down there. It is most certainly coming from the top down, and what is so shocking about what you've just heard from Mike Johnson to talk a little bit like an attorney general, which I once

39:07was. Yeah. And what I think the general's are leading the charge here is the idea that the postal service routinely screens your mail. Right. That's such a great point. What should he get? No. No, he's okay. That one you get, right? We'll deliver that one, but not this one. That's not what the post office does. No. In fact, this is great. First class mail. Yes. The idea. Take it from here. You give it there. I mean, it is truly shocking that a top official should take so much of it. The idea that the postal service should be censoring, and that's what's happening here. And you know, what is really dangerous here is the sabotage of mail-in ballots that are used by one-third of all Americans. One-third of all votes are now at risk, including quite prominently, most notably the president of the United States who just recently voted by mail again. If I could just double and triple down this point that the center makes, it's so important. Imagine the next step, which is, you know, we think certain magazines are harmful.

40:11So we're not going to deliver those. This isn't a front to what the republic was based on that the mail served this function for everybody and didn't discriminate. Number two. It's in the, just to be clear, of all the things that we have constructed in the massive federal government in the 21st century and the post-New Deal and stuff. It was much, much, much, much, much smaller the founding, but it did include the post office. Yes. And for this purpose, also, by the way, the post office has a board of governors that's supposed to make important governance decisions. They haven't voted on this. This is all being done in a lawless way, not just via the Constitution, but via the post office is supposed to work. Well, let me stay with you on a second. I mean, I think, you know, there's one injunction in place. The procedural stuff here, it gets very hard even from my, you know, my wife is an incredible lawyer and she walks me through it and I still lose it the second I leave the room. There's one in here. Why isn't she on there? Good question. You know, there's one injunction in place. The others lifted temporarily as you sort of work through the merits. I think a lot of people have thought, look, every lower court that's looked at this for the reasons you say, you can't do this.

41:13But a little worried about what happens in the Supreme Court. Like, how comfortable are you? This is going to get sorted in the right way. I am reasonably confident because I read the language in the Constitution. So our brief is pretty basic. This is the role of the states. The president has no role here. The earlier Supreme Court ruling was not on the merits. It was a procedural ruling. It was mischievous. It was unfortunate. Mischievous, right? But it wasn't on the merits. When they get to the merits to say anything other than the president has no power in the Constitution here, to me is unhinged from the Constitution. Yeah. When they get to the merits in June of 2020, you know, seven. Well, it turns out, you know what that deal was. But that is really a problem, Chris, because right now they've stayed in order, stays a kind of temporary hold. And if this Supreme Court takes the decision, maintains the stay, and there is in effect no permanent resolution here, post office could conceivably just go right ahead with the

42:15system. And I've been asked repeatedly, what should people do? And I tell them, have a plan. Make a plan. Tell your friends and neighbors to have a plan to go to the polls the way it used to work predominantly. Oh, and you're state that's a little tougher in Washington state. Yeah, it's a different plan in Colorado. We're going to make sure people get their ballots. It should be through the Postal Service. If we can't win in litigation, we will find another way. We need to protect our elections as we do them and stand strong in administration that's attacking them. Oh, go ahead. And I think that my Republican colleagues, I know we have talked about Republicans having the spine to stand up to the president. But ballots in red states are much as risk as ballots in blue states. Well, I mean, part of the thing here is, you know, whatever the partisan valence, and this is the DHS had a citizenship list portal to advance it. And it's that the website was down. We should just note, you know, we talk about it in terms of mischief and in terms of

43:19destruction in terms of the Constitution. But like, no one should have their vote for it. I don't, you know, it doesn't matter if we are. It doesn't matter how you vote. Like, obviously, this has all been done with a particular intent. But what they're describing, the whistleblower content complaint would be like tons of people's votes across the political and ideological structures. Yeah, let me just say Utah uses mail-in voting just like Colorado does. So does Idaho. And the governor of Wyoming recently complained about the Civil Rights Division from the Justice Department. The Republican governor. Republican governor. So this should not be a democratic issue or a Republican issue. This is an American issue. This is core to our democracy. We got to protect our elections. And I do think there should be a real backlash here. I don't know why we're not here for more Republicans right now. I hope your colleagues stop up to say this is unacceptable. Yeah. Well, we're going to continue to follow it very closely. I looked at you both back soon. I didn't get to ask you about the racer and against a really colorful individual. People should check it out.

44:19You can check me out at Phil for trial.com. It is surreal times we're living in. That's for sure. Truly one of the strangest races in the country right now. Senator Richard Blumenthal, of course, who published that whistleblower report, Colorado Attorney General, and gubernatorial nominee, Phil Weiser. Thank you both, gentlemen. Thank you. That does it for all in. You can catch us every week night at eight o'clock on MS now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's Facebook.com slash on with Chris. We'll see you next time. Real talent is defined by what people can do, not where they learn to do it. So by stopping at the education section of a resume, you might throw away the perfect higher. Skills First Hiring helps you see talent others miss. Like more than 70 million stars, skilled through alternative routes. Let their story unfold and gain a competitive advantage because hiring managers who start with skills are 60% more likely to find a successful higher. Higher skills first. And why at tetherpapershealing.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.