Even Republicans Won't Defend Trump's Mail Voting Order

Most Republican AGs won't defend Trump's mail voting order, USPS can't deliver ballots on time, the Pentagon is secretly paying influencers, and former Republicans are running as Democrats

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Less than half of Republican attorneys general are willing to defend Trump’s war on mail-in ballots. The U.S. Postal Service is already failing to deliver those ballots on time in primaries across a dozen states. The Pentagon has been secretly hiring conservative influencers to promote Pete Hegseth’s agenda on social media. And a growing number of former Republicans are running for office as Democrats in the 2026 midterms.

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Even Republicans Don’t Want to Defend Trump’s Attack on Mail Voting

When you’ve lost half your own team, it might be time to rethink the play.

Only 12 of the 27 Republican state attorneys general have signed on to defend Trump’s executive order to restrict mail-in voting, which the administration is trying to implement through a new U.S. Postal Service rule before the November midterms. The other 15 have been uncharacteristically quiet.

The 12 who did sign on echoed the Justice Department’s talking points, calling the new requirements “modest mailing conditions that increase the security of mail-in voting.” State election officials have said in court filings that the rule would require them to redesign and reprint millions of ballot envelopes, which cannot be done before November.

Meanwhile, all 24 Democratic attorneys general and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro filed a new lawsuit last week to block the rule before November. They argued it will prevent states from administering their mail voting programs and disenfranchise a significant share of the 47 million Americans who voted by mail in 2024.

When asked why they sat this one out, Utah and Tennessee’s AGs declined to comment. The other 13 didn’t respond at all.

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Mail Ballots Are Being Rejected Because USPS Can’t Deliver Them on Time

The Postal Service’s official advice to voters is to mail their ballots a week early, which is the bureaucratic way of saying “I wouldn’t eat here.”

Roughly a dozen states have seen a rise in mail ballots being rejected for arriving late, a trend that has appeared in both this year’s primaries and last year’s general elections. Election officials are now warning that the U.S. Postal Service may not be equipped to handle ballot delivery at all for the fall midterms.

The Postal Service has been consolidating mail operations into fewer regional processing centers to cut costs. As a result, mail now travels an average of 139 miles to reach a processing facility, and in some cases as far as 500 miles.

California officials said changes in how the Postal Service processes mail contributed to the rejection of more than 148,000 ballots following the state’s June primary. About 63 percent of those ballots were late even with a seven-day grace period. Hundreds of ballots were late in Wisconsin after an election in April.

The Postal Service said it remains committed to its role in the electoral process, and it has not changed its longstanding advice for voters to mail their ballots at least a week before their state’s deadline. Meanwhile, top officials in Kansas and Michigan are urging early voters to deliver their ballots in person rather than trust the mail.

Pentagon Secretly Hires Conservative Influencers to Promote Pete Hegseth

The Defense Department has an $850 billion budget, and a non-zero amount of it goes to tweets.

The Pentagon has been secretly hiring conservative influencers with large online followings to spread Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s agenda. The department won’t say what they’re being paid, what they actually do, or how long their jobs are supposed to last.

The influencers include Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel with more than 135,000 followers on X, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel with nearly 620,000 followers. Both have active government email addresses with a “.civ” suffix, meaning they’re civilian employees.

Retired Army colonel Thomas Anderson, who writes under the pen name Cynical Publius and has more than 323,000 followers, was listed in Pentagon records earlier this year. As of late last week, his name had been scrubbed.

All three are assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, not public relations. Readiness apparently now includes content strategy.

More and More Former Republicans Are Running as Democrats

The Republican Party has gotten so bad that some of its former members would rather run against it than fix it.

A growing number of former Republicans are running for office as Democrats in the 2026 midterms, arguing that their backgrounds give them a unique ability to connect with voters who feel homeless in either party.

At least three Democratic House candidates in this year’s general election are former registered Republicans, including former TV anchor Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania and Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey. Nancy Lacore, who left the GOP a decade ago, is now trying to flip Rep. Nancy Mace’s seat in South Carolina.

The most prominent of the group is David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from the Tampa area who switched his registration and won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Florida. He will face Republican Byron Donalds in November.

Democrats haven’t won the Florida governor’s race since 1994, but to be fair, they’ve never tried a Republican before.

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