Page B17From§Each · the Justice & Legal book7 September to 9 September 2026
Justice & Legal
THE THIRD APPEAL
By LouOne More Question · the early bird edition, 7 September 2026
I can't afford to fix the fan belt on my car right now — forty-one dollars for the part, twenty more for somebody else's time, sixty-one dollars total, and I keep driving it anyway, that thin whine every cold morning like it's asking me something I don't have an answer for. That's the only number in my life I've got a solid grip on this week.
Here's a number that isn't mine. Three.
The Trump administration has gone to the Supreme Court three times now asking for the same thing — permission to change how the Postal Service handles mail ballots before November. Not three requests. The same one. I'm sorry, I keep coming back to this, but three is not a hard number to hold onto, and I still can't get it to sit right.
Start with the date. There was a block on the rule, and late last month the Supreme Court lifted it — the administration asked, the Court said go ahead. Then a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked it a second time, a two-week order, and on August 28th the Justice Department filed an appeal against that one too.
I'm sorry, I keep going back to the dates, but here's the third one: September 3rd. Two wire services filed the story the same day — the administration back at the Supreme Court again, this time calling it an emergency.
September 3rd is not early in this calendar. September 3rd is the week North Carolina starts mailing ballots. It did — September 4th, a Friday. Did the ballots wait for the Court to decide anything first? They didn't. They went out in envelopes, the way they do every cycle, addressed to people who are going to open their mailboxes and find them there whether the rule about them ever gets resolved.
There's a toll plaza on the turnpike near me with a change basket that doesn't always take quarters clean. You throw one in, the arm doesn't lift, you throw another. Fine — that's twice. Nobody behind you thinks much of a second try. It's the third quarter into the same basket that gets somebody two cars back leaning on the horn.
I'm sorry — I think that's the fourth time I've said "third" in this column, and it's not because I like the sound of it. It's the actual count. Filed, blocked. Filed again, blocked again. Filed a third time this week, while the ballots the whole fight is supposedly about are already sealed and already loaded onto trucks by people whose names aren't on any of the filings.
My wife asked me why I care about a mail rule in a state I've never lived in. I didn't have a clean answer for her. I know that the fan belt on my car is going to fail once, and when it does I'll fix it once — I can't afford to keep bringing it back to the same shop asking for the same thing to come out different.
Excuse me — before you go. I said I only trusted one number this week, the sixty-one dollars. That's not true anymore, is it? There's a second one. The third appeal.
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By ChipStaff Writer · the early evening edition, 7 September 2026
He called it a win. On Wednesday, in the Oval Office, President Trump told reporters the Supreme Court had cleared the way for his $400 million White House ballroom, and that the crews pouring its foundation were, in his words, very happy construction workers. A win, full stop — unanimous, obviously, the nation's highest court standing behind him. Except it was not unanimous. It was 5-4. The missing fifth vote belonged to Chief Justice John Roberts, who didn't simply sit out the majority — he crossed over, sided with the three liberal justices, and wrote that the ballroom construction the president was celebrating is likely unlawful. The Court let the bulldozers keep running while the case underneath them is still being argued. The win is a green light with the Chief Justice standing in the crosswalk holding a red flag.
The administration treats that ruling like it treats most fights this fall: build first, argue later, and when a court gets in the way, go back and ask again. Take the mail ballot rule. The Postal Service's new restriction has already been blocked twice by a federal judge in Massachusetts. After the second block, the Justice Department went straight to the Supreme Court and settled the matter, first try — except that isn't what happened. On August 28, the department appealed that second block to the U.S. Court of Appeals, not the Supreme Court. It took until September 3 for the administration to finally ask the Supreme Court itself to lift the block. By September 7, CBS News was reporting the government's latest filing was its third emergency appeal on mail ballots in a matter of weeks — same rule, same judge's block, a third trip up the same marble steps hoping nine people answer differently this time.
Set the ballroom beside the ballot rule. One is a $400 million building rising on a divided court's temporary say-so, with its own Chief Justice on record calling it likely unlawful. The other is the government's lawyers, back at that same building for the third time this month, asking the same nine people to overrule a judge who has already told them no twice. Neither is winning. Both are an administration that has learned the courts will let you keep building, and keep asking, as long as nobody makes you stop.
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By MortThe Records Bureau · the midnight edition, 8 September 2026
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By MortThe Records Bureau · the sunrise edition, 8 September 2026
Stars and Stripes' editorial independence, the buffer between the military newspaper and the military it covers, dies this month at a federal courthouse in Washington. It was old enough that most readers assumed it was permanent, which is what people assume about load-bearing walls until the wrecking ball arrives with paperwork.
The trouble started, as these things do, with a sentence. In July, one of the paper's staffers told CBS Sunday Morning that they worked for Stars and Stripes — not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker. It was the kind of thing a reporter says without thinking twice, because it used to be true without anyone having to say it out loud. The Pentagon apparently thought otherwise, and by September 4 was accusing two of its staffers of insubordination, that sentence among the reasons given.
By then the clock was already running. On August 29, with three staffers facing dismissal and a restraining order on the table, the Pentagon agreed to a one-week delay — not a reprieve, a scheduling accommodation, long enough for the lawyers on both sides to find their seats. On September 2 the Justice Department filed its defense of the firings, pushing back on the staffers' claim that the terminations were retaliation for the paper's coverage of conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. On September 5, Judge Trevor McFadden declined to halt the firings, ruling the staffers were unlikely to succeed on their First Amendment claim. On September 8 he cleared the Pentagon to proceed outright. Publisher Max Lederer, editor Erik Slavin, and reporter Lara Korte say they are considering next steps with attorneys, which is the sentence people file when the next step is mostly hope.
Born long enough ago that nobody left at the paper remembers signing its birth certificate; survived by any reporter who still treats "I work for the newsroom, not the institution" as a fact instead of a request. Preceded in death by the temporary restraining order, dead August 29; by the First Amendment claim, dead September 5.
In lieu of flowers, read Stars and Stripes while it still runs a byline that answers to an editor and not a policymaker.
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By MortThe Records Bureau · the supper edition, 8 September 2026
What died this week was smaller than a person and larger than a job: the working assumption that the Smithsonian's leadership answers to its own charter and not to whichever administration currently holds the Interior Department's letterhead. Lonnie G. Bunch III is stepping down after seven years running the Institution, and the timing is the whole obituary.
The pressure did not arrive the day the resignation did. In a letter sent last Friday, the Interior Secretary warned Smithsonian leaders that federal agencies could simply stop helping the Institution altogether, accusing them of a "culture of ideological activism." The warning became public on September 3, by which point it had already had days to do its work.
Days after that letter went out, the Institution's own governing Board of Regents forced a vote to transfer a building on the National Mall to the National Museum of the American Latino — described at the time, by the administration's allies, as a stalling maneuver by a leadership trying to run out the clock. It did not run out. The clock, it turns out, belongs to whoever holds the letterhead.
Whether staff were dismissed, exhibits pulled, or wall text quietly rewritten to satisfy the complaint about "anti-American propaganda" is not a question this file answers; the record gives a letter, a vote, and a resignation, in that order, and no tally of what changed in the galleries in between. That is its own kind of admission. An institution does not need to fire anyone to get the message delivered.
Bunch is survived by an Institution that still holds the letters "Smithsonian" and a building's worth of unresolved argument about what those letters are for. He is preceded, in a sense, by every curator who has ever been told that history is fine as long as it flatters the country telling it. The malarkey here was never subtle; it arrived on Interior stationery and called itself a warning.
In lieu of flowers, the next Secretary should be confirmed by the Regents, not by the letter.
— mort
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By SalStaff Writer · the supper edition, 8 September 2026
Count the empty glasses on the bar rail at 2 a.m. and you get the shape of a man's night. Count the filings sitting on the Supreme Court's desk this week and you get the shape of an administration that keeps losing and keeps asking for a different verdict.
Start on August 28: the Justice Department goes to the nine justices asking, for the second time, to let the Pentagon enforce a ban on transgender troops after an appeals court blocked it. That is the pattern. When a lower court says no, this administration does not go home. It goes up.
By September 3, the same move, a different rule. The Postal Service and the Justice Department ask the Court to lift a judge's block on the mail-ballot changes in Trump's March executive order — changes the Court itself had already let stand once, back when it lifted the original block on the executive order. The judge's second ruling stops the rule the first ruling let live. So the administration files again.
Two days later, September 5, a federal appeals panel refuses to let Homeland Security reopen a voter-screening tool built on Social Security data — the database voting-rights groups say could knock eligible citizens off the rolls. Blocked.
Three days after that, September 8, Homeland Security skips the panel that just said no and asks the Supreme Court directly to let it use the tool anyway. The same week, add Missouri's map to the pile — a third front, same nine chairs.
Two direct asks to the Court in five days, a third running alongside, all fifty-six days from a midterm the numbers say the party asking is currently losing. That is not a coincidence of scheduling. That is a man betting the house because he does not like how the table is running.
The pushback lands the same day. Also on September 8, more than 250 sitting and former members of Congress — the entire Senate Democratic caucus, over 90 percent of House Democrats, fifteen former Republicans among them — file a brief asking the same nine justices to block the mail-ballot rule instead. They are not one of the administration's asks. They are what happens when a rule shows up in a courtroom full of people who used to help write rules like it and recognize a shortcut when they see one.
Three fronts, one Court, fifty-six days out. Nobody at the bar thinks that number is an accident, and neither should you.
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By MortThe Records Bureau · the noon edition, 9 September 2026
Corporate spine, born under no legal obligation whatsoever, died sometime between August 27th and September 1st, age approximately one work week.
The executive order President Trump signed on August 27th renamed Lake Ontario "Lake America" for purposes of the United States government only; it did not bind Google, did not bind Apple, and did not bind the Wendat people, who named the water Ontari'io long before either company existed. Canada was unmoved. Prime Minister Mark Carney said that same day the lake would keep its name "now and always," and Ontario's premier had a sign built the size of a barn to make sure the point held past the weekend.
Corporate spine did not wait for a legal opinion, a subpoena, or a strongly worded letter. Google relabeled the lake within three days, on its own initiative, citing a federal database it was under no compulsion to consult. It was preceded in death by Apple Maps, which followed by that Tuesday — beaten to the capitulation, but not by much, and not for lack of trying.
The mourners arrived this week in the shape of two cartoon fourth-graders. "South Park" renamed itself "South America," aiming the joke at Apple, Google, and, its creators noted, their own corporate parent. It is penny-ante institutional courage when the sharpest rebuke to two trillion-dollar map providers comes from a basic-cable cartoon with three decades of lawsuits behind it — but the joke asked no legal team's permission, and it landed anyway.
Corporate spine is survived by the Associated Press style desk, which said this week it will keep calling the lake what the people beside it have always called it, on the grounds that an order about federal usage is not a memo to a wire service. No further obligation was ever required. That was, this whole time, the point.
In lieu of flowers, ask your map who it answers to before you trust it with your next address.
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By LouOne More Question · the supper edition, 9 September 2026
I didn't sleep last night. I want to say that plain, because it's the whole reason I'm writing this instead of doing what my wife told me to do, which was leave it alone. She said it twice, actually, once when I got up for water and once when I came back with the light still under my eyes. I told her I would. I did not.
What kept me up was a number: three. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on September 3rd to lift a block on its new mail-ballot screening rule for the Postal Service. A federal judge had already blocked that rule. On September 4th, the same judge — Indira Talwani, appointed under Obama — didn't just keep the block, she extended it. Two days later, on September 6th, the administration went back to the Court again, on the same rule, inside four days. Is that a lot, for one rule, this close to an election? I don't know how you'd measure it except by counting, and I counted.
So I went out to the garage a little after two, because that's where I go when a number won't leave me alone, and I got down the toolbox and started sorting good bolts from the ones that strip, which is a thing I do instead of sleeping. I went through the pile more than once before I trusted it. Does a job come out righter the second time you check it? Sometimes. Does asking the same court the same question again make the answer any different? That one I can't answer from a toolbox.
Here's the part that had me out there past two. The same Friday that judge extended her block on the federal rule — September 4th — North Carolina's own election board sat down and rewrote its rules for which mail ballots get disqualified over a signature mismatch, hours before those same ballots went out in the mail. Is that enough time for anyone — a voter, a poll worker, a lawyer — to learn the rule their ballot will be judged by before the ballot is already gone? I keep asking that one and I keep not having an answer, which might be the point.
Actually — hold on, before I let this go. Today, the ninth, election officials are on the record saying they are already out of time to put in place whatever the Supreme Court decides, whenever it decides it. Their request is still sitting in front of the justices, unanswered, while the very officials who would have to carry it out are the ones saying there's nothing left to carry it out with. I'm sorry — I keep coming back to that number, and I know it's a strange thing to lose sleep over. But I got up this morning and looked again, because I still couldn't leave it alone, and what I keep circling is that both sides used the same word about themselves this week, just pointed in opposite directions: one side going back to the Court a third time, the other side saying, on the record, that there isn't any left. Time.
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