Arizona's execution pitted experts against politicians. Experts lost
Gunches's case was unusual in many ways, not least that he stopped his legal appeals and volunteered to be executed, then changed his mind before changing it again. His execution was scheduled to be carried out almost two years ago. It was put on hold when the Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, commissioned an independent review of the state's death penalty procedures after a series of botched executions.
But over the last several months, she pushed hard to make sure Gunches died for his crime. She even fired the expert retired Judge David Duncan who she had chosen to do that review, before he could complete his report.
Her decision to let Duncan go was shocking. At the time, she offered the following explanation: 'Your review has, unfortunately, faced repeated challenges, and I no longer have confidence that I will receive a report from you that will accomplish the purpose and goals of the Executive Order that I issued nearly two years ago.'
The governor also noted that the department of corrections, rehabilitation & reentry had conduct 'a comprehensive review of prior executions and has made significant revisions to its policies and procedures'. But doubt about whether she could rely on a review conducted by the group which is in charge of the state's executions in why she appointed Duncan in the first place.
That is why I suspect that Hobbs tossed Duncan aside because she didn't like the facts he was finding or the conclusions he seemed to be reaching.
Facts are stubborn things, but, in our era, they can be tossed aside with little political cost and no regret. Why rely on expertise if it gets in the way of achieving a result you want to reach?
Still, Hobbs's unprecedented decision to 'kill the messenger' was another low moment for a society increasing living by a line uttered by a newspaper editor in the classic movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: 'When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.'
In the world of capital punishment, the 'legend' to which politicians like Hobbs are attached is that it can make America a safer and more just place. They want us to believe that they embrace the death penalty to bring closure to family members of murder victims rather than to accrue political capital.
Note what Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes said during a news conference following the execution: 'An execution is the most serious action that the state takes, and I assure you that it is not taken lightly. Today, Arizona resumed the death penalty, and justice for Ted Price and his family was finally served.'
After Gunches's death, the sister of the man he murdered echoed that sentiment. Karen Price called the execution 'the final chapter in a process that has spanned nearly 23 years'.
Ted Price's daughter added that Gunches's death means that she will no longer have to revisit 'the circumstances surrounding my father's death' as she had to for over two decades of seemingly endless legal proceedings. 'Today,' she said, 'marks the end of that painful chapter, and I couldn't be more grateful'.
That chapter would not have ended if Governor Hobbs had been willing to listen to her own expert.
Before being sacked, Judge Duncan prepared a draft of his report and wrote a letter to the governor's office previewing his conclusions. He called lethal injection an unreliable method of execution and said: 'Drug manufacturers don't allow states to use the appropriate drugs.'
Duncan had spent nearly two years reviewing Arizona's use of lethal injections. As he explained, 'Early on, I thought lethal injection would work. The more I learned about it I learned that that was a false hope.'
Duncan told the governor that, in his view, using lethal injection was too risky. In his view, the best course would be for Arizona to adopt the firing squad because 'it has the lowest botch rate.'
That was not the news Hobbs hoped her expert would deliver, so she let Duncan go. It seems he just didn't understand that she wanted him to ease the way toward a resumption of lethal injection executions rather than suggesting that the state should not execute anyone until it could adopt what he considered to be a better method.
And Duncan was not the only one raising questions about Arizona's resumption of lethal injection executions. Last January, law professor Corinna Lain, a leading expert on lethal injection, said: 'The evidence is overwhelming that Arizona cannot lawfully carry out an execution by lethal injection at this time. Its pentobarbital protocol is sure or very likely to cause a tortuous death even in the best of circumstances.'
She went on to say: 'The circumstances here are far from optimal. The State is on the cusp of using an inexperienced, untrained team to inject likely expired drugs stored in unmarked mason jars that were produced by a company that does not make drugs for human consumption and that will be compounded by a pharmacy that the … (the state) itself has previously disavowed.'
Disregarding expert knowledge is very much in fashion in many areas of American life, not just where the death penalty is concerned. The Atlantic's Tom Nichols explains that 'Trump allies make noises about expert failures … [and] demonize what its constituents believe was the medical establishment's attempt to curtail civil rights during the coronavirus pandemic.' He argues that Elon Musk's attack on civil servants is really an attack on the 'very notion of apolitical expertise.'
But, as Nichols explains, such doubt is not confined to Washington DC. It is found in the 'homes of ordinary American families'. There, 'knowledge of every kind is also under attack. Parents argue with their child's doctor over the safety of vaccines. Famous athletes speculate that the world might actually be flat. College administrators ponder dropping algebra from the curriculum because students keep failing it.'
So, it is not surprising that the attack on knowledge would infect decisions about how to end the lives of people condemned to death. Political leaders – including Democrats like Hobbs – know they can play into the burgeoning culture of disrespect for what experts have to say, so they dispense with Duncan and ignore Lain.
The more publicly they display that disrespect, the more politically they can benefit.
It wasn't always this way when decisions had to be made about methods of execution. At the end of the 19th century, before New York decided to abandon hanging, the state convened a commission to consider and recommend alternatives.
That commission sought out the best minds to help them make their decision. It chose the electric chair.
The decision whether electrocution 'would be by Alternating Current (AC) or Direct Current (DC)' was informed by a competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, both pioneers in the development of electricity.
That was then. Today, as the Arizona example shows, such expertise does not govern the choice of execution methods.
In the wake of the Gunches execution, Governor Hobbs and the 'down with experts crowd' may feel vindicated because nothing seemed to have gone awry. But they should not rest easy, and neither should any of the 112 inmates on Arizona's death row.
Studies have shown that lethal injection has the worst track record of any method of execution used in the last century in this country. That is why it is only a matter of time before an execution in Arizona proves the folly of ignoring experts and the insights they offer.
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The Independent
13 hours ago
- The Independent
The strangest members of Trump's inner circle have more power than they've ever had before
In rural Pennsylvania, I'm hiking through the forest with Simone and Malcom Collins and discussing the executive order they wrote for Donald Trump. Just outside their house — beyond the chicken coop, where they gather their eggs for homemade cakes, and the fenced-in part of the yard where their Corgi, The Professor, plays — is a forest, a small river, and some easy hiking trails. It's a beautiful day in late spring, and among the greenery and the birdsong, we feel very far from Washington. Yet Simone and Malcolm are surprisingly influential in the Trump administration. I'm here to work out exactly how that happened. As we walk and talk, the day heats up. Malcolm points out a disused mine shaft on the property, and takes us further along to show us the abandoned remnants of railroad leading up to it. Simone suggests we head back to their stone cottage for some homemade lemonade. She's pregnant with their fifth child; her fourth, one-year-old Industry Americus, is strapped to her back in a carrier. She's struggling with the walk, but Malcolm insists we carry on a little longer. He likes to show off the scenery. It turns out that the executive order — the controversial 'give out motherhood medals to women who've had six or more kids' one that caused such a stir recently — was actually written by Simone alone, with some help from AI. Malcolm manages their five-day-a-week podcast schedule, she explains, while she's responsible for most of their written output. It makes sense to me that Simone would have been the decider on the medals, I say. After all, she's the one who carries the children. It seems like she'd be the most opinionated on which number of offspring counts as medal-worthy. And of course, she wouldn't have chosen five, since she's already achieved that. She laughs. 'It's true,' she says, 'that would've been awfully convenient for me.' Six, she supposes, is a personal 'stretch goal,' so that probably did factor in. But of course, her real stretch goal is fourteen. The Collinses are part of a small but growing movement known as 'pronatalism' — the belief that society should actively encourage childbirth, often through incentives or cultural pressure, to stave off civilizational collapse. But they aren't religious, and they don't agree with forcing people to have children through rolling back reproductive rights or outright bribes. Instead, they are former Silicon Valley-based tech founders, who use polygenic analysis on their IVF embryos in an effort to select for advantageous traits. There's some debate about whether the couple — with their bold, thick-rimmed glasses and their penchant for an edgy take — are fringe weirdos or credible commentators. One thing's for sure: once you scratch the surface of their political connections, it's clear they have a whole lot of influence for supposed fringe weirdos. So how exactly does a pronatalist couple living in the countryside get their work on Donald Trump's desk? The Collinses don't like to talk specifics, but a little digging reveals that they have multiple points of connection with the current administration. For one thing, Malcolm's brother Miles is in DOGE, the Elon Musk-founded 'Department for Government Efficiency' which isn't really a department. It is, instead, a group of people handpicked by Musk (who recently left the administration, publicly insulted Trump, then walked it all back) who work inside each sector of government, functioning as overseers. Miles and his wife, Brittany, are pronatalists themselves, though they're much more private about it than Simone and Malcolm: they've never even publicly confirmed how many children they have. They're also entrepreneurs, just like Malcolm and Simone, and they recently co-owned a series of fertility clinics. It's a common thread among DOGE staffers, who clearly have more in common than simply a passion for businesslike efficiency. Musk has to be the most famous pronatalist on earth at this point, having publicly stated for a number of years that he believes he has a moral imperative to procreate as much as possible. And weeks after the birth of his first child, White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary and DOGE spokesperson Harrison Fields wrote a Mothers' Day tribute to his wife that read: 'Let's keep building this Fields Family — the more babies who call you Mom, the better.' Then there's JD Vance, whose 'childless cat ladies' remark was once considered a faux pas and now looks a lot more like a dog-whistle. The father-of-three has been talking about how he wants 'more babies in America' for years. And his brief stint in Silicon Valley — once a bastion of liberal values, now increasingly leaning right — as a venture capitalist made him some friends in very high places. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were all at Trump's second inauguration in January. There's an increasing sense among many that the age of straight-up, populist MAGA is ending. Out of the ashes of the final Trump term, some hope, will emerge a tech-adjacent, anti-woke New Right that is ready to lead America, pioneered by JD Vance and financed by the likes of Thiel and Musk. That may explain the fallout between Musk and Trump not long after Musk departed the White House a few weeks ago. It may also explain why Vance's reaction to the fallout was noticeably muted. The black sheep of the family On a tour round the Collins house, Simone points out all the different places where 14 children might be able to sleep if she's able to bear that many. At the moment, she sleeps in a four-poster bed made of dark wood, carefully made up with expensive linens. There's a crib in the corner, though she usually co-sleeps with Industry. The other three kids — Octavian George (a boy), Torsten Savage (a boy), and Titan Invictus (a girl) — sleep in a triple bunk-bed downstairs. In a closet under the stairs, there's a twin bed jammed into the space with three sets of ear defenders suspended above. That's where they put Octavian sometimes, Malcolm says, because he has meltdowns. The decor is mainly in keeping with the old house — painted portraits, a lemon-motif tablecloth — with scattered pieces of aggressive Americana (large flags, a mounted AR-15.) Every room is spotless, except Malcolm's bedroom, which he quickly closes the door on after we've taken a perfunctory peek. Inside, expensive video and audio equipment for the podcast is shoved into a corner, empty cans and food wrappers litter the surfaces and some of the floor, and a gigantic screen looms over the unmade bed. Malcolm explains that he's always been the 'black sheep of the family.' He was once suspended from school and sent to a Holes -style juvenile correctional facility for threatening students. What actually happened, he says, is 'I was building explosives in my backyard, building switchblade type things,' in the way of lots of young boys in rural Texas. Word got around, and he ended up in the principal's office, where he was told: 'We're really concerned about the thing that you're making, because you could use it to like, kill other students or something.' Malcolm laughs: 'I was just like, aghast. I got really angry. I was like: You're insulting me! That would be such an inefficient way to kill students! If I was gonna kill other students, I'd do it like X and Y and Z.' Such literal-mindedness didn't go down well with the school, and the school's reaction didn't go down well with Malcolm's parents. They sent him away to what Simone calls 'prison camp' and then, after that, to boarding school — he never returned to the family home after the age of 13. After weeks at the correctional facility, he ended up hospitalized with malnourishment and weighing — at over six feet tall — just 90 pounds. 'People tried to kill him at that prison camp,' Simone says. It sounds like a harsh upbringing and a traumatic experience. Does Malcolm harbor any resentment toward his family for exposing him to things like that? 'No,' he says quickly. After all, he turned out fine in the end. The 'urban monoculture' will 'try to turn people against their natural support network, which is their birth culture and their family, and try to convince them: hey, you should go to a therapist and what did your parents do to you? What's this trauma you have with your parents?' he says. 'I think that there are going to always be malevolent forces that benefit from getting us to blame our parents for things. And I do not think that is good for me to model that to my kids. For example, if I go around talking about, oh, my parents this, my parents that, why would they not adopt the same thing as me? I think it's on all of us to understand that parents generally try to do what's best for their kids. And the more that we are tricked into believing anything else, the easier it is for us to be led culturally astray.' What counts as Malcolm's 'birth culture' is a little complicated. Simone takes an ornamental mug out of the kitchen cabinet and shows it to me: it belonged to Malcolm's grandfather when he was in Congress. As I turn over the mug in my hands, Malcolm talks about how he comes from 'the greater Appalachian cultural tradition,' where 'as a young kid, you do blow things up — you're supposed to blow up army men, you do build explosives, you do make flamethrowers. That's a sign that you are, within this culture, innovative and vitalistic.' It's a culture of truck nuts and mud-wrestling, he adds, and it's very egalitarian: the champion female mud-wrestlers, for instance, are afforded a lot of respect in the community. Despite his efforts to tell a quintessentially Appalachian backstory, it's clear that Malcolm — who grew up in Texas — is less JD Vance and more RFK Jr. There's a Collins Rotunda at Harvard, a physical testament to the amount of money Malcolm's family has donated over the years. His uncle was the former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank in fact, pretty much every relative has been to an elite Ivy League institution and runs a successful startup or works in government. Family gatherings are both intellectually stimulating and brutally dog-eat-dog. When he got into Stanford Business School, Malcolm says, he rang his dad in a moment of great excitement and pride to tell him, and his father drily responded: 'Their standards must really have dropped.' Secret societies and off-the-record retreats You won't just find members of the Collins family dominating the upper echelons of public and private sector roles; you'll also find them, if you're privileged enough, in the underworld of American secret societies. It's a world that holds a special interest for Malcolm and Simone both. Simone was once the managing director of Dialog, a secret society co-run by the billionaire PayPal and Palantir founder Peter Thiel. It's an experience she calls 'eye-opening'. It happened in 2020, when she and Malcolm were both looking for jobs 'but he, being a white man, wasn't going to get one in 2020 for sure,' she says. 'Even people who talked with him candidly were like: We really can't hire someone of your profile right now.' Simone, however, was a little more lucky: she got a callback after applying for an interesting-sounding role through a platform called Scouted. Dialog recruits desirable candidates — based very much on how much money and influence they have — and invites them to off-the-record retreats to discuss the future of America. 'Even among secret societies or even just invite-only societies and ideas festivals, [Dialog] is definitely the most snobby and exclusive,' Simone says, smiling. 'I codified their qualifying criteria — and I know now that they're even more rigorous about it.' The organization had two levels: 'Junior Dialog' and then Dialog proper, 'and at that time — so I'm sure it's more expensive now to attend — Junior Dialog was maybe $6,000 or something' for a three-day retreat, while 'adult Dialog was like $15,000,' she says. The Dialog retreats are held in isolated places like the middle of the Utah desert, and they're 'extremely high-touch,' meaning that everyone is expected to participate in debate and conversation — 'as in, you get kicked out if you don't participate.' Every conversation has a chosen moderator, sometimes a Dialog staff member and sometimes a participant, and that moderator will 'rate every single participant.' At the end, the ratings are tallied up, and the people with the lowest ratings are kicked out immediately. 'They will even kick people out in the middle of the event,' Simone adds. 'And these are people who have paid $15,000 to be here.' In Simone's opinion, the criteria can be a little harsh. In Malcolm's, however, they're completely reasonable. 'The main reason you would get kicked out is if [you were trying] to shut down controversial conversations by being like: You can't talk like this, this is offensive and I'm gonna shame you,' he says, adding that that's something the urban monoculture does all the time in the wider world. He thinks it's fair enough to excommunicate someone for behaving that way, 'because people were preventing open and honest conversation.' How does one get noticed by the Dialog staff, and therefore invited to their secret retreats, in the first place? There are 'various criteria' that might get you an invitation, says Simone, along the lines of: 'Has your startup raised over $50 million? Do you have 500,000 followers on social media plus a huge media impact, or are you a famous international advocate? How many news stories are out about you?' You have to hit a number of these to be able to come along, adds Simone, and even she and Malcolm don't qualify for Dialog anymore. 'So it's very elite,' Malcolm clarifies. He would know. The Collins family has long had connections in secret societies, if the rumors are to be believed. The Bohemian Club, an all-male secret society that operates the annual retreat Bohemian Grove and whose members have included a number of US presidents, made the news a year ago when it was reported that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had attended with a billionaire friend. Malcolm's godfather was supposedly also a high-ranking member. These days, however, retreats like Bohemian Grove — often referred to as a 'summer camp' for the super rich and powerful — are being eclipsed by edgier, weirder alternatives. Hereticon is the most famous, with its own clandestine annual conference — 'The Apocalypse Ball' — that wannabe attendees can apply to via Google Doc. Questions on the application include: 'What apocalypse are you currently focused on (realizing or preventing)?' Malcolm says that Hereticon is 'the best secret society in the world right now.' Past attendees have said that the annual Apocalypse Ball includes activities like getting tattooed on the spot, taking home your own genetically engineered frog embryo (you get to insert a genetic quirk, such as bioluminescence or albinism or a gene to make the frog grow extremely large, with the help of an on-hand scientist), and attending off-the-record salons with speakers who have been 'cancelled' or are 'ideological outcasts' in mainstream society. Where Bohemian Grove was a nostalgic summer camp with suits, Hereticon is a technicolor playground for rich and powerful people who insist on their supposed underdog status. Backed by Peter Thiel's venture capital firm, Founders' Fund, it hosts discussions on issues like how to achieve immortality, ' transhumanism ' (i.e. enhancing the human body with robotics and other tech), and UFOs. In 2022, Grimes — the musician and mother of three of Elon Musk's children — posted a selfie from Hereticon, where she appears to have done a surprise DJ set that year, as well as in early 2024. Was the richest man in the world himself in attendance? It seems likely, but Simone and Malcolm are cagey about anything relating to Musk. In the large, low-ceilinged kitchen of their stone house, Simone looks up a recipe for lemon cake and then starts to make it, pouring from an industrial-sized bag of flour and using eggs from the coop outside. Industry dozes on Simone's back, clutching a toy scavenged during our slow drift from room to room earlier. A little 'Trump 2025' flag is placed conspicuously in a vase on top of the refrigerator, and Malcolm is bouncing a child's playground ball off the hard floor again and again as he describes how he sees himself as a superhero fighting Thanos when he stands up to the urban monoculture. They vacillate between domestic asides and political commentary: Simone brings out a black-and-white picture of the owners of the house from the 1800s; Malcolm talks about how transgender people have unfairly taken over the LGBT conversation and put off the 'normal gays'; Simone describes how she was brainwashed by liberal thinking after her upbringing in California, and how Malcolm helped her see that during an impassioned conversation on their first date; Malcolm glances out the window and points out some DIY that he needs to attend to outside. Simone is wearing a white bonnet that Malcolm encouraged her to put on after we arrived, because they like to wind people up with exaggerated tradwife-style costumes. Malcolm is dressed in a polo shirt and jeans. Simone offers round seltzer waters; Malcolm brings out a six-pack of Coors Light for himself and starts on the first. What's bothering me, I say, is that, despite their various connections in high places, I still don't entirely understand how they got that draft executive order in front of Trump. Malcolm is clear that he and his brother do not have 'career conversations'. He mentions that The New York Times criticized their motherhood medal idea and, in doing so, amplified it. But a newspaper can only do so much, I say. What about Elon Musk? He's an extremely prominent pronatalist. At the time of the executive order, he was spending every day at the White House. Do you ever have conversations with him? The mood in the room dramatically shifts. Malcolm trains his eyes on the floor. 'He has never funded our organization,' he says, eventually, 'and a lot of people believe he has. That's what I can say about that.' I push a little harder. I'm not asking about money towards pronatalist causes, I say, but just pronatalism in general, as a political aim without finances involved. Have they ever sat down and had a chat with Elon Musk about that? Silence again. 'What I can say is that he hasn't funded us,' Malcolm repeats, eyes still on the ground. I turn to look at Simone, who's now sitting in the corner with Industry on her lap. 'I think I hear what you're saying,' I say, and she catches my eye and smiles. It's not a denial, but it is plausible deniability. Changing society through AI Simone and Malcolm own another small house on their property, where their neighbors live rent-free so long as they can provide day-to-day childcare. But even with such nearby help, parenting is still hard. Both Octavian and Torsten are autistic. They each have very firm food preferences and eat restricted diets, and they get overstimulated easily. A lot of the time, every person in the house eats a different meal, in different rooms to each other. The Collinses have friends in the pronatalist movement, people with similarly large families with whom they can trade tips and tricks. Once, Malcolm says, he asked one of those families how they approach a situation where a child really seems to be struggling, such as refusing to eat anything except white rice due to sensory issues. What do you do to tamp down the anxiety? Their response, he says, was refreshing: 'Just have more kids!' It reminded him that such modern stressors would never have bothered their ancestors, and that a lot of the time, children work things out on their own. The pronatalist movement is 'very diverse,' Simone says, as we discuss further the families that they know. There are Catholics, tradwife types, tech-forward New Right devotees like the Collinses themselves. It does sound diverse, I say, in some ways. But where are the progressive pronatalists? Do they know any? They stop talking for a moment and Simone says, 'Hmm.' Eventually, they concede they don't know any, but that there probably are some out there. Maybe they're too shy to declare themselves because of the liberal order. Perhaps they've been blinded by the urban monoculture and feel like they should have fewer children than they really want. Back from an afternoon with the neighbors, Titan and Torsten come running up the garden path and into the house. Malcolm redirects them into the fenced-off yard, where Titan — a ball of energy with her hair in pigtails — pokes at the chickens in the coop and Torsten — more quiet and reticent — stops to examine my photographer's camera. Industry is still on Simone's back, occasionally dozing and babbling to herself; Octavian is at kindergarten, and will come home later on the school bus. As the family gathers together for a photo, Malcolm chases Torsten across the grass and throws him over his shoulder. They're all wearing yellow shoes, Malcolm and Simone included. Malcolm explains that it's a family policy, as it's an easy way to identify each other from afar. Although Octavian goes to kindergarten at the local public school, Malcolm says, they plan to educate the kids primarily via AI — hopefully through their own educational startup, The Collins Institute, if they can secure funding. With potentially fourteen children in the home, Octavian, Torsten, Titan, Industry, soon-to-be-born baby Tex and their siblings will have very different opportunities to Malcolm, who grew up with just one brother, and Simone, who was an only child. That's true, says Malcolm, but his family gave him 'no inheritance' anyway — the only thing they did was pay for college. Can Malcolm and Simone afford to do the same and pay their kids through college? No, but college isn't worth it any more, they say. It's just a breeding ground for liberal indoctrination. AI will replace it, and that can't happen soon enough. The Collinses are confident that AI is going to rapidly change society — politically, academically, and socially — and that the New Right will be at the forefront of that change. Recent developments suggest that they're correct, and that the current administration is particularly invested. In mid-June, executives from OpenAI, Palantir and Meta were sworn in as Army Reserve officers after the Department of Defense awarded them each multimillion-dollar contracts to build a solid AI component for future 'warfighting'. And Trump's so-called Big, Beautiful Bill includes one extremely unusual element: an effective ban on states implementing any AI regulations for at least 10 years. Malcolm believes that as his kids grow up, they will remain ideologically aligned with him. AI education will help with that; they won't be indoctrinated by teachers into the urban monoculture, and they'll be able to explore their own personal interests through the help of a personalized AI tutor. With four kids under the age of five and another on the way, the Collinses have no problem with family rows over politics at the moment. But I wonder what a house full of teenagers as headstrong as Malcolm and Simone will look like in the future. It's getting late in the afternoon. As we exit the house and start saying our goodbyes, Titan follows us down the path, shrieking and getting under Malcolm's feet. She is a rambunctious, happy little girl who bears a striking resemblance to her father. Simone, keeping an eye on Torsten and still hauling Industry, hangs back at the house. 'Do you wish you weren't born?' Malcolm asks Titan repeatedly, as they stand at the gate and watch us walk towards our car. 'Are you glad you're alive?' Titan just looks back at him in confusion and laughs. She is, after all, only three years old.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Trump doubles down on baseless claims that mail-in voting is ‘corrupt', undermines voting machines
Update: Date: 2025-08-18T18:52:53.000Z Title: an executive order that's being written right now Content: The president tells reporters that executive order scrapping mail ballots is 'being written' — citing debunked theories about fraud, cost and inaccuracy Trump pledges to scrap mail ballots before 2026 midterms Shrai Popat (now); Marina Dunbar and Tom Ambrose (earlier) Mon 18 Aug 2025 19.52 BST First published on Mon 18 Aug 2025 10.29 BST From 7.12pm BST 19:12 In his press conference with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump has spent a chunk of time answering a question about his earlier threats to end mail-in voting and the use of voting machines. He said today that 'we're going to start with by the best lawyers in the country to end mail in ballots because they're corrupt.' It was a winding detour where he repeated a conspiracy that Democrats prefer mail-in voting because it's 'the only way they can get elected', and to promote what he described as 'transgender for everybody', 'open borders' and crime – which he says is a 'new thing they [Democrats] love'. The president's remarks included a number of false claims. Namely that the US is 'just about the only country in the world' that uses mail-in ballots. Dozens of western democracies use mail-in voting, including Canada, the UK, and Germany. Most European countries offer some form of mail voting, and over 100 countries let their citizens vote by mail when living abroad, according to data from International IDEA. The president has, in the past, voted by mail. Trump also said that voting machines are inefficient and costly, adding that paper ballots allow for results to be released 'the same night'. Election officials and experts routinely say this is inaccurate. Stephen Richer, the former recorder of Maricopa County in Arizona, debunked a number of the president's falsehoods about voting machines. Richer characterised machines as 'highly accurate. And fast. And cheap,' in a post on X today responding to the president's earlier comments. Similarly, a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that 'hand counts are not only less accurate, they take more time than machines, which delays election results.' The report adds that voting machines also save tax payers money. Updated at 7.50pm BST 7.49pm BST 19:49 Anna Betts Oklahoma's top education official is reportedly introducing a new assessment for teachers coming from California and New York that will gauge their alignment with the so-called Sooner state's conservative values. Oklahoma's public education superintendent, Ryan Walters, told USA Today and CNN that the 50-question certification exam – which is reportedly set to roll out in the coming days – will ask about topics such as the 'biological differences between males and females', freedom of religion and US history. According to USA Today, the test also includes questions related to false claims that electoral fraudsters handed the 2020 presidential race to Joe Biden at the expense of Donald Trump, who returned to the White House in January. Walters said that the test – which he has dubbed the 'America First' certification, invoking a favored slogan of the Republican president – is intended to ensure that teachers from the two largest Democrat-led states 'are not coming into our classrooms and indoctrinating kids'. He told CNN that while the test will apply to teachers coming from California and New York, it could expand in the future to applicants from up to eight states who want to work in public education in Republican-led Oklahoma. Walters believes that California and New York have required teachers to 'do things that are antithetical to our standards and values as a state' and that the assessment will help ensure 'that these teachers agree to teach what is required in the state of Oklahoma'. Updated at 7.52pm BST 7.25pm BST 19:25 Also in my last post, I cited the former Maricopa County recorder – Stephen Richer. A little reminder Richer is a Republican whose refused to agree with the president's claims that the 2020 election was stolen. He was in charge of election operations in Arizona's largest county until 205. In his post on X, takes a number of the president's other claims about mail-in voting and machines and debunks them one by one. From watermark paper: This is a way of authenticating that the ballot is legitimate. It is NOT a way of counting the ballot. The watermark ballot would still have to be counted either by tabulators or by hand. Watermark has no impact on speed. This makes no sense. To how voting machines actually work: Most 'voting machines' are simply scanners that read the ovals that you hand marked on your ballot. These work the same way that scanners work when you took standardized tests in high school and college. Richer also reiterated how, legally, the decision to end mail-in voting, and overhaul the way states conduct their elections is not up to the federal government: Article 1 Section 4 Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives states authority over the 'Times, Places, and Manner' of election administration. 7.12pm BST 19:12 In his press conference with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump has spent a chunk of time answering a question about his earlier threats to end mail-in voting and the use of voting machines. He said today that 'we're going to start with by the best lawyers in the country to end mail in ballots because they're corrupt.' It was a winding detour where he repeated a conspiracy that Democrats prefer mail-in voting because it's 'the only way they can get elected', and to promote what he described as 'transgender for everybody', 'open borders' and crime – which he says is a 'new thing they [Democrats] love'. The president's remarks included a number of false claims. Namely that the US is 'just about the only country in the world' that uses mail-in ballots. Dozens of western democracies use mail-in voting, including Canada, the UK, and Germany. Most European countries offer some form of mail voting, and over 100 countries let their citizens vote by mail when living abroad, according to data from International IDEA. The president has, in the past, voted by mail. Trump also said that voting machines are inefficient and costly, adding that paper ballots allow for results to be released 'the same night'. Election officials and experts routinely say this is inaccurate. Stephen Richer, the former recorder of Maricopa County in Arizona, debunked a number of the president's falsehoods about voting machines. Richer characterised machines as 'highly accurate. And fast. And cheap,' in a post on X today responding to the president's earlier comments. Similarly, a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that 'hand counts are not only less accurate, they take more time than machines, which delays election results.' The report adds that voting machines also save tax payers money. Updated at 7.50pm BST 6.52pm BST 18:52 Per my last post, my colleague Lucy Campbell is covering the president's meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House in detail. She reports that Trump doesn't rule out future security guarantees in the form of US troops. He added earlier that 'it's never the end of the road. People are being killed and we want to stop that.' For Zelenskyy's part, Lucy reports that when Ukraine's leader is asked if he's prepared to agree to 'redraw the maps' (i.e. cede territory to Russia), Zelenskyy highlights Russia's continued attacks ahead of today's talks and emphasises the need to stop the war, stop Russia, by way of diplomacy. 6.20pm BST 18:20 Lucy Campbell Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived at the White House for high-stakes talks with Donald Trump and European allies. He was greeted by the US president, both men stopped for pictures by the press before moving swiftly inside. Zelesnkyy notably appeared to be wearing a suit, thus removing at least one previous point of contention from his last visit in February. 6.02pm BST 18:02 Tate Reeves, Mississippi's Republican governor, announced that he approved the deployment of about 200 Mississippi National Guard troops to Washington, DC. 'I've approved the deployment of approximately 200 Mississippi National Guard Soldiers to Washington, DC, to support President Trump's effort to return law and order to our nation's capital,' he said in a statement today. 'Crime is out of control there, and it's clear something must be done to combat it. Americans deserve a safe capital city that we can all be proud of. I know the brave men and women of our National Guard will do an excellent job enhancing public safety and supporting law enforcement.' The deployment is part of the Trump administration's effort to overhaul policing in DC through a federal crackdown on crime and homelessness. The move comes as protesters pushed back as federal law enforcement and National Guard troops flooded the city following Trump's executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia National Guard members. 6.02pm BST 18:02 The Texas House achieved quorum today for the first time in two weeks since state Democrats staged a walkout in protest of a gerrymandered congressional map drawn by Republicans. 'Let me also be clear about where we go from here. We are done waiting. We have a quorum. Now is the time for action. We will move quickly, and the schedule will be demanding until our work is complete,' said House speaker Dustin Burrows, a Republican. Burrows added that members who left the state, and for whom civil arrest warrants were issued, will only be given permission to leave the legislature if they agree to have a state trooper assigned to them to make sure they return. The House began a second special session, after ending the first early, on Friday. Today's quorum now paves the way for the new map to pass the Texas legislature – and for the redistricting battle across the country to continue. State lawmakers in California are set to return from recess today to get to work in considering a special election in November, and approving a new congressional map. This is part of the overall redistricting race that California governor Gavin Newsom pushed for in order to offset Texas's map, which could see the GOP pick up five US House seats. Updated at 6.17pm BST 5.51pm BST 17:51 Richard Luscombe A federal judge in Miami heard arguments on Monday that detainees at the remote immigration jail in the Florida Everglades known as 'Alligator Alcatraz' are routinely subjected to human rights abuses and denied due process before being deported. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is one of two separate actions before the courts that could lead to the closure of the controversial facility celebrated by Trump for its harsh conditions. District court judge Kathleen Williams is expected to rule this week in the other case, brought by an alliance of environmental groups and a Native American tribe, claiming that the immigration jail has inflicted irreversible damage to the fragile wetlands. Earlier this month, Williams issued a temporary restraining order against the state of Florida halting new construction and expansion of the tented camp, although its operations for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) were allowed to continue. The jail currently holds an estimated 700 detainees. 5.36pm BST 17:36 European leaders have begun arriving at White House. Mark Rutte, NATO's secretary general, was the first to arrive, followed by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to be last to arrive. 5.20pm BST 17:20 Democratic lawmakers in Texas have returned to the state, ending a walkout that broke quorum and blocked Republican efforts to redraw congressional maps at the behest of Trump. Texas House of Representatives minority leader Gene Wu, chairperson of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement that Democrats had returned and had 'rallied Democrats nationwide to join this existential fight for fair representation.' But Texas governor Greg Abbott on Friday already called a second special legislation session in another attempt to rework the state's congressional maps in an effort to give Republicans another five seats in Congress. Texas House Democrats left the state earlier this month to deny Republicans the quorum needed to vote on redistricting legislation, a tactic taken several times but is usually unsuccessful. Gavin Newsom, California's Democratic governor, unveiled his own redistricting plan on Thursday that he said would give Democrats there five more congressional seats. 5.05pm BST 17:05 Sam Levine The conservative outlet Newsmax has agreed to pay $67m to Dominion voting systems to settle a defamation suit over lies about voting in the 2020 election. The settlement came as the case was headed to trial. Earlier this year, Delaware superior court judge Eric Davis ruled that Newsmax had defamed the voting technology by broadcasting false claims about its equipment after the 2020 election. A jury would have considered whether Newsmax was liable for damages. Dominion had sued the outlet for $1.6bn. 'We are pleased to have settled this matter,' Dominion said in a statement to CNN. In a lengthy statement of its own, Newsmax was defiant, saying it chose to settle not because it was admitting wrongdoing, but because it believed Davis wouldn't give the company a fair trial. 'Newsmax believed it was critically important for the American people to hear both sides of the election disputes that arose in 2020,' the company said in a statement. 'We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism.' Dominion obtained a $787.5m defamation settlement from Fox in 2023 on the eve of a defamation trial in Delaware. Newsmax agreed to pay $40m to settle a defamation case against Smartmatic, another voting equipment company, last year. One America News, another far right outlet, also settled a defamation case with Smartmatic last year. Fox is currently defending itself in a pending defamation suit against Smartmatic. 4.44pm BST 16:44 The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) – one of the country's largest civil rights organisations – has issued a statement criticising the the president's posts to social media that threaten to end mail-in voting and end the use of voting machines. They deem his attacks as 'part of his strategy to sow distrust in our elections and prevent voters from holding him accountable'. Here's the full statement from Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project: 'Mail-in voting remains a vital safeguard of our democracy. It ensures that voters with disabilities, those without transportation access, and others who rely on its flexibility and access can exercise their right to vote. President Trump's attempts to undermine a safe, proven, and reliable method of voting — that he himself uses — along with his attacks on voting technology, are just another part of his strategy to sow distrust in our elections and prevent voters from holding him accountable. We are prepared to protect mail-in voting in court against unfounded and unconstitutional attacks, as we have in Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and other states. Access to mail-in voting is necessary to a fair and inclusive electoral process.' 4.34pm BST 16:34 Ahead of a busy afternoon at the White House, here's a list of the European leaders arriving shortly. They'll also take part in a larger meeting with Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni French president Emmanuel Macron UK prime minister Keir Starmer German chancellor Friedrich Merz Finnish president Alexander Stubb NATO secretary general NATO Mark Rutte Updated at 4.48pm BST 4.11pm BST 16:11 In recent days, DC mayor Muriel Bowser has shown small but concerted signs of pushback against the Trump administration following last week's federal takeover of the Metropolitan police department (MPD), and deployment of national guard Troops. Over the weekend, Bowser posted on X: 'American soldiers and airmen policing American citizens on American soil is #UnAmerican'. This came just a day after the DC attorney general Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit against the Trump White House, alleging a 'hostile takeover' of the city's police when drug enforcement administrator Terry Cole was named 'emergency police commissioner'. The justice department ultimately agreed to keep DC police chief Pamela Smith in charge, after a federal judge threatened to block the order. At a press conference on Friday, Bowser said she was 'encouraged' by the administration's decision to renege on the management of the MPD. She also described last week's federal takeover as 'unsettling and unprecedented' in a letter to residents published on social media. Bowser also characterised the administration's actions as an 'authoritarian push', having taken a measured approach to the president's invocation of Section 740 of the Home Rule Act. Updated at 5.04pm BST
Reuters
2 days ago
- Reuters
Trump vows to target mail-in ballots ahead of midterm election
WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he would sign an executive order ahead of next year's midterm elections, saying he would lead "a movement" targeting mail-in balloting and voting machines across the country. "I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we're at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES," he wrote in a social media post without providing any evidence. "WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections," he added. Trump, a Republican, previously signed a March 25 executive order targeting elections that has been blocked by the courts after Democrat-led states sued. States run elections separately in each of the 50 U.S. states, but Trump warned them to comply. "Remember, the States are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do," Trump wrote. The Republican president's comments follow his meeting with his Russian counterpart on Friday, in which Trump said Vladimir Putin agreed with him on ending mail-in balloting. Trump, who promoted the false narrative that he, not Democrat Joe Biden, won the 2020 election, has long pressed his fellow Republicans to try harder to overhaul the U.S. voting system. He also voted by mail in some previous elections and urged his supporters to do so in 2024.
