Trump / Fascists to Cancel Voting Rights

 Panic within the Trump White House over their impending demise in the 2026 midterms has reached a fever pitch and they are now pulling out every stop to try to save themselves. 

Last week it was announced that President Trump ordered the US Postal Service to stop mail in voting for every state that does not provide the White House with the state’s list of registered voters. The ban is now moving forward.  However, the fact that they want these voter lists should scare you even more than the cancellation of mail in voting.  The White House is trying to compile these lists so that (1) they can challenge the ballots of every Democrat and ensure their votes don’t count. And (2) so that in the event of civil unrest and or the suspension of habeas corpus, the Department of Homeland Security will have a list of where all registered Democrats live.

The NAACP is challenging the order but unfortunately due to MAGA’s capture of the US Supreme Court, they have us dead to rights.  The US Supreme Court has become the harbinger of American fascism. They must be stopped before they transform our nation into an unrecognizable hellscape.   Though it may be too late to stop the Supreme Court from banning mail in voting, it is not too late to stop the rulings that await in the not so distant future: a national abortion ban, greenlights for mass detentions of Democratic activists and mass killings of undocumented migrants, and so much more.  Terrifyingly, this conservative majority on this court could last until 2065, more than enough time for the far-right to carry out their most depraved desires. That is unless Democrats take unprecedented action to seize the court.  The moment Democrats reclaim power in DC, Democrats can and must move to pack the court with liberal justices to reclaim a majority on the court. We did it under FDR and we can do it again.  Defend our Courts is preparing for exactly this moment. There will be some who claim we need to follow precedent and wait until 2065 to reclaim the majority. It’s on us to steamroll them and ensure everyone does their part to take back this court.  +++++++++++++ This case and others reveal why we will need to use aggressive aactions by States to defend our democracy.  States can act and can resist.  Trump plans to sabotage the midterms, so we're going to need a plan to stop him. As soon as he took office again, Trump started signaling that he intends to interfere with the midterms. There are too many examples to cover everything, so here are some of the lowlights from just the last year: March 2025: An executive order trying to unilaterally overhaul election administration. July 2025: Ordered Texas to gerrymander five new Republican House seats. August 2025: An executive order to "get rid of" mail-in ballots ahead of the midterms. January 2026: Told the House GOP "they should cancel the election.”He regretted not seizing the voting machines after 2020, and then later that month he sent goons to raid Fulton County's election hub. February 2026: Said Republicans should "nationalize" elections. The next day Steve Bannon said, "You're damn right we're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November," and urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. March 2026: Issues an executive order to create state-by-state citizen lists and orders USPS to deliver mail ballots only to federally approved names. Installed election denier Dan Bishop to run DOJ's "election-integrity" efforts. April 2026: Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for racial gerrymanders in former Confederate states. Trump team threatens to force blue states to redraw their own maps.  June 2026: Raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a voter-registration nonprofit. Even as he meets resistance from the courts and some blue states, he's clearly not backing down. So what's our plan? We need to get into election protection formation -- let’s talk about how. For the last 75 weeks or so, Leah and I have hosted What's the Plan, our live Q&A with the Indivisible movement. It’s a unique space: thousands of people from across the country and the world, together every week, working through the strategy and tactics of organizing against fascism. When we’re at our best, we’re cutting through the noise, demystifying some process or institution, and focusing on what we all can actually do. If Indivisibles are going to plan together for how we organize in defense of the midterms, the place to have that conversation is What’s the Plan. We don’t want to shortchange the big topic, so this week we’re trying something a bit different.

Trump and the MAGA Fascists Begin to Steal the 2026 Elections

 Trump Tries to Rig the 2026 Elections.

Apparently concerned that even racism won’t help keep Republicans in office, Trump is trying to rig the system.

Yesterday the Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule to strip civil service protections from about 50,000 federal employees, enabling the administration to replace nonpartisan civil servants hired for their skills with loyalists. Trump tried to do this at the end of his first term, but his successor, President Joe Biden, reversed the plan immediately upon taking office. The United States has had a nonpartisan civil service since 1883. When the government proposed the reintroduction of the political system the U.S. had before then, 94% of 40,000 public comments opposed the change. Only 5% supported it.

The Republicans are also trying to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would require a document proving citizenship in order to register to vote and in order to vote. Only Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington have “enhanced” driver’s licenses that would meet the requirement. In all other states, voters would need either a passport or a birth certificate.

Half of Americans don’t have a passport, others don’t have their birth certificates, and the names of married women who took their husband’s last name and transgender Americans would not match their birth certificates. All of these groups tend to vote for Democrats. The bill also calls for state officials to purge voter rolls. The Brennan Center for Justice found that if the measure passes, about 21 million Americans could lose their votes.

Heather Cox Richardson.   Letters from an American 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-6-2026?

The 2026 elections will be critical tests for the resistance.  It will be easier to win in 2026, than if the Trump/Magas continue to consolidate power until 2028. 

 

Poor People's Campaign Plans March on Joe Manchin

 June 7, 2021

By 

Jack Jenkins

WASHINGTON (RNS) — The faith-led Poor People’s Campaign is planning a march in the home state of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to protest the moderate Democrat’s recent decision to oppose voting rights legislation and efforts to end the Senate filibuster.

Poor People’s Campaign co-chair the Rev. William Barber announcedvia Twitter on Monday (June 7) that his group will stage a “Moral March on Manchin” next week. The march is in addition to a separate protest against Manchin and Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., later this month.

In an interview with Religion News Service, Barber said plans for the march came about at the request of activists in the state outraged by Manchin’s recent policy positions, which the pastor argued “hurt poor and low-wealth people.”

“They said it’s time to march on his office,” Barber said. “It’s time for people of all differences to stand together against him — we call it ‘from the hollers in the mountains to the hood.’”

The march is in reaction to an editorial Manchin published over the weekend in The Charleston Gazette-Mail. Although Manchin expressed support for a bill known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, he stated in the editorial he would vote against the For the People Act, a sweeping voting rights bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in March and enjoys support from prominent Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock of Georgia.

Warnock is among those who have expressed openness to eliminating the Senate filibuster to pass the bill, which would allow it to make it through the Senate with a simple 51-vote majority instead of the current requirement for a 60-vote supermajority. Similarly, the Poor People’s Campaign has decried the filibuster, which is seen by some activists as hamstringing efforts to pass an array of liberal-leaning bills.

But Manchin shot down hopes he would back such efforts in his editorial, describing the For the People Act as “partisan” and declaring he “will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, left, and the Rev. William Barber. (Left, AP Photo/Patrick Semansky. Right, RNS Photo/Jack Jenkins)

Barber blasted the positions of Manchin, a Catholic, as incongruous with Christianity. 

“He claims to be a religious person, but the Scripture tells us in Matthew 23: ‘Woe unto those who tithe — who go through all the procedures — but leave undone weightier matters of the law, which is justice,'” he said.

Manchin’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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RELATED: Poor People’s Campaign, lawmakers unveil sweeping resolution to tackle poverty

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Barber noted representatives from the Poor People’s Campaign met with Manchin earlier this year to discuss, among other things, support for a $15 federal minimum wage (Manchin instead floated a lower figure). The meeting — which was requested by Manchin’s office after Barber’s group threatened demonstrations — included residents of West Virginia, one of several states where the Poor People’s Campaign regularly stages protests.

“We explained to (Manchin) why his defense of the filibuster was historically inaccurate and politically dangerous, and how his position against living wages was hurting over half of the workforce of West Virginia,” Barber said. He noted they also discussed how Manchin’s refusal to support the For the People Act “was hurting not just Black people, but white people, brown people and particularly poor and low-wealth people.”

Barber added: “Even if (Manchin) doesn’t change, we have to bear witness to how his policies are hurting the democracy, are a form of political and legislative violence, and that he is standing more on the side of the corporate lobbyists rather than poor and low-wealth workers and people across this country.”

Details of next week’s protest, scheduled for June 14, are still in flux. Although announced as a march, Barber said organizers are discussing the use of “other non-violent direct action.”

“Thousands upon thousands of people (in West Virginia) don’t agree with his economic position, or his position on voting rights, or his position on the filibuster — and it’s time for them to speak up,” Barber said.

Join the March on Washington

“You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. . . . There must be a better distribution of wealth . . . and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speech to the SCLC staff, Frogmore, S.C., November 14, 1966

    Democratic socialists Bayard Rustin, Walter Reuther and A. Philip Randolph

helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 50 years ago.

They knew that ending legal segregation and winning political rights for African Americans were essential, but not sufficient, to ensure justice and freedom for all. Without access to good education, to health care and above all to decent jobs that paid living wages, the vote was not enough.

     Today, as the recent Supreme Court decision has emboldened racists and reactionaries in many state governments to roll back the electoral influence of African Americans and Latinos, we are marching again to defend the gains in voting rights of the last 50 years. These rights are essential to overturn Stand Your Ground laws and to end the mass incarceration of young people of color and the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants.