After attendees eagerly complied, Trump added: "You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to hell."
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Trump makes supporters pledge to vote, lets Postal Service decide whether they get to
“They get you to raise your hand and swear an oath around a joke about hell, so you're busy laughing while the actual paperwork gets decided down at the sorting facility. The whistleblower already told Congress the thing might not deliver the ballot at all — that's not a threat, that's a design spec. You don't have to steal an election if you can just make sure some of the mail never shows up.”
“It's a pledge, not a policy — the Postal Service changes are routine operational updates, standard election-cycle housekeeping — wait, they're not routine, they came out of an executive order that a whistleblower called fatally flawed and that the Justice Department had to run to the Supreme Court just to keep alive over a judge's objection. That's — okay, that's not "housekeeping." Forget I said housekeeping.”
The receipts
President Trump closed out the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on Thursday by urging attendees to pledge to go out and vote in November’s midterm elections. “Please raise your right hand,” Trump told a stadium packed with his supporters as he was met with some laughter.
Our politics reporter Reid Epstein explains how the Trump administration is using the Postal Service to intervene in mail-in voting in state elections.
An anonymous federal whistleblower has warned that the Trump administration’s new system for handling mail ballots through the U.S. Postal Service is untested, fatally flawed and likely to lead to a “catastrophic failure” if it’s implemented ahead of November’s midterm elections.
· 'We Must Stop Trump’s Authoritarian Power Grab,' Sanders Says of Assault on Mail-In Voting from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Postal Service Whistleblower Warns Trump Assault on Mail-In Voting Could ‘Derail the Midterm Elections’ from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
· Postal Service asks Supreme Court to allow Trump’s mail voting changes from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.