The Cup of Patience.
The holy grail of batteries.
News Items is “the most valuable newsletter out there.” — Peggy Noonan.
1. Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting. President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue. The White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s plans. “Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” said Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for the draft executive order. Ticktin attended the New York Military Academy with Trump and was part of his legal team that filed an unsuccessful 2022 lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him with allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. “But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes,” Ticktin went on. “That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.” The emergency would empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference, Ticktin argued. The idea of claiming emergency executive powers based on allegations of foreign interference attaches new significance to the administration’s actions to reinvestigate the 2020 election. Trump has never accepted defeat, while never finding evidence of widespread fraud. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is leading a review of election security that officials said focuses on foreign influence. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
2. The chief federal judge in Minnesota accused federal officials of continuing to disobey judicial orders related to immigration enforcement and then mischaracterizing the scope of their missteps. The judge, Patrick Schiltz, threatened to hold government officials in criminal contempt if the pattern continued, writing in a scathing order on Thursday that, “one way or another, ICE will comply with this court’s orders.” “The court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt — again and again and again — to force the United States government to comply with court orders,” wrote Judge Schiltz, who was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush. (Source: nytimes.com)
3. Pakistan carried out airstrikes on Afghanistan’s two largest cities on Friday, including the capital, Kabul, according to officials from both nations, escalating months of tension and border skirmishes into an open conflict. Beyond Kabul, home to six million people, the strikes hit the southern city of Kandahar — where the Taliban’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, lives — and the border province of Paktia, according to Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban government. Pakistan launched the strikes hours after Afghan troops had attacked Pakistani border positions, according to Afghan and Pakistani officials. The Afghan attacks were described as retaliation for Pakistani strikes earlier in the week. “Our cup of patience has overflowed,” Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, said on social media. “Now it is open war between us and you.” (Source: nytimes.com)
