Midterms
Trump on his Court: a shell of their original selves. Mail ballots still go out.
He named Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett. Blanche took the Rose Garden. The USPS screen is still dead.
The Rocket News · Washington Bureau · WashingtonSeptember 16, 2026 · 5 min read

President Trump spent Tuesday naming the justices he put on the Court. Gorsuch. Kavanaugh. Barrett. A “shell of their original selves.” The unsigned order Monday had already killed his Postal Service screen for the midterms. He wrote that the Court’s “inability and unwillingness to do the right thing” would go down, “in a very negative way, in the annals of History.” The Politics desk files a president at war with his own picks.
Attorney General Todd Blanche took the Rose Garden, standing in for a press secretary who left in August. The mail-ballot fight, he said, is not over. The order did not rule on barcodes or voter lists. Kavanaugh: too close to November. Alito and Thomas dissented. Nearly a third of the country votes by mail. Eight Democratic states vote only that way.
It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself.
Video
Forty-nine days. Times/Siena has Democrats plus nine. Diesel printed $6.31. The Politics desk files Wednesday as it is: a rant, a garden, and a tray of envelopes the White House does not get to sort.
Wire and further reading: time.com
Filed under Politics
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The midterms
Trump put the Kansas and Iowa rallies back on.
Reuters: a White House official said Friday the weekend stops are back, on top of nearly 20 tele-rallies. Thursday he had said he did not have to go to Kansas. This photograph is Sioux City on Oct. 22, not Sunday.

The midterms
Trump stood with Darline Graham in Rock Hill. He said she has the gene.
The Associated Press: he was in South Carolina Thursday for the second time in a month. He told her he had gotten her into the race. He said he did not have to go to Kansas. This photograph is the rally, not Florida.
Video · Reuters

The midterms
Trump listened in Chillicothe. Today he is due in South Carolina.
The Associated Press photographed him Wednesday night while Vivek Ramaswamy spoke. He said a tremendous victory was coming. He had not spoken in South Carolina when this edition closed.
