my train of thought just totally derailed ...

So, in terrible news, Trump's trying to pull some strings to pass this massive internet censorship bill, featuring all the kinds of internet censorship we're terrified of, including mandatory ID for accessing basically any website, specifically to crush state regulation of AI, because apparently this man will always see the moral bottom of the barrel and start digging.

Democrats and voting-rights groups have challenged the proposed rule as a harmful federal intrusion that could affect millions of voters who cast their ballots by mail.

The New York Times | Gift🎁link (no paywall) | By Adam Sella and Nick Corasaniti | June 11, 2026

The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a new rule that would allow it to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that don’t turn over voter rolls to the federal government.

The rule.... calls on states to compile lists of mail voters that Postal Service employees would use to screen ballots for eligibility. If states refuse to comply, the agency could refuse to send their mail ballots.

Democrats and voting-rights groups say the proposed rule is clear evidence that the Trump administration is trying to unconstitutionally intrude on state-run elections.

Withholding some mail services... could affect millions of Americans. And most of those affected would likely be Democrats, who disproportionately vote by mail.... Screening mail ballots for voter eligibility, meanwhile, would amount to an unprecedented, and potentially unconstitutional, involvement of the federal government in the administration of elections. [....] The rule is consistent with an executive order Mr. Trump signed in March.... Postal experts said the order also threatens the service’s independence. Anton Hajjar... said his main concern is that Mr. Trump’s order amounts to “political interference with the U.S.P.S., which by law is supposed to be independent.” [....] At a gathering of Republican lawmakers in March, [Mr. Trump] framed support for legislation that would in part crack down on mail voting as a way to hold the G.O.P. majority in Congress.

“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” he told them, warning that failure would bring “big trouble.”

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Trump wants to interfere in the 2026 election by having his administration comb through state voter rolls and, according to CNN, use the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database--which is "prone to produce false positives"--in order to disproportionately "purge" potential Democrats (especially racial/ethnic minorities) from voter roles, like has often happened in the past by certain states.

Although Democrats went to court to try to stop Trump's executive order, according to the NY Times, "Judge Carl J. Nichols  ruled in late May that it was premature for the court to intervene" until the order was fully implemented, because no real "harm" had yet occurred. (It is not surprising that Judge Nichols is a Trump appointee.)

➡️[See below the cut about how one can comment about the USPS Proposed Rule: Ballot Mail for Federal Elections]