A U.S. Postal Service official has alleged that the agency is moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement President Trump’s order exerting federal control over mail voting, despite a court order blocking those plans.

The official filed a whistle-blower report, published on Tuesday morning by the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, asserting that the “risky and haphazard” implementation of Mr. Trump’s order could lead to a “catastrophic failure” in the mail ballot system ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The report said that the agency had planned to complete the new digital system overseeing mail ballots by Sept. 1.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the official said in the report, which was prepared with the assistance of Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit group that represents people seeking to expose potential lawbreaking.

Speaking to reporters by phone on Monday, Mr. Blumenthal said of the report that “the main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans. One-third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the U.S.P.S. puts all of their votes at risk.”

A Postal Service official declined to comment on the record.

Voting by mail will become much more difficult, if not impossible, for tens of millions of Americans if the Postal Service is allowed to implement the restrictive rules governing mail voting that Mr. Trump has demanded.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly promoted false claims of widespread fraud through mail-in voting, which he has described as “cheating,” “corrupt” and “horrible,” even though he voted by mail in two elections this year. He has moved to restrict mail-in voting using a variety of procedural and legislative levers.

Those moves have led to a pileup of legal rulings and challenges surrounding the nation’s electoral system just two months before the midterm elections. The rules could especially affect states where some of the most competitive races for House, Senate and governor will determine control of Congress and state governments.

Michigan, where 37 percent of votes were cast by mail in 2022, would be one, with competitive statewide contests and multiple battleground House races. California, which mails ballots to all voters, is expected to be central to Democratic efforts to win control in the House.

The Supreme Court had allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with Mr. Trump’s mail ballot executive order, reasoning that a lawsuit challenging the order was premature because the administration had not started implementing its plans.

But days before the court ruled, the Postal Service formally published a new plan to comply with the executive order. Judge Indira Talwani, a Federal District Court judge in Massachusetts, reasoned that the stakes had changed with the new plan and temporarily blocked it, concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could spark chaos by changing rules a little more than two months before an election.

The whistle-blower report provided specific details of the Postal Service’s effort to rapidly implement a new digital system for mail ballots, even as a federal appeals court had blocked the plan before the Supreme Court intervened. Work has also continued on the system even after Judge Talwani ordered the plan halted last week, the report said.

The official at the Postal Service raised “grave concerns” in the report that the verification process in the system could reject tens of thousands of ballots in a bulk-mailing batch if “even one bar code on one single ballot” failed to properly scan, and that the rushed, “slapdash” development of the system would significantly increase the chance of errors and other failures in the verification process.

The Brazilian billionaire who shares control of JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, lobbied President Trump to lower tariffs on beef imports as a way to tame rising U.S. prices.

Joesley Batista met with Trump in the Oval Office on Aug. 20, and they discussed how additional beef supplied from Brazil could help if Trump dropped a 26% import tax, according to people familiar with the matter. It couldn’t be learned who organized the meeting between Batista and Trump.

The next day, on social media, Trump announced a plan to temporarily allow more foreign beef imports into the U.S. Trump said the imported products would be sold at a 25% discount to market prices.

In a statement that day, the Brazilian government said President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva held an 80-minute call with Trump that touched on issues including tariffs, combating organized crime, and their views on current global conflicts. Brazil is the world’s largest producer of beef.

Rising beef prices have been a vexing conundrum for the Trump administration in its effort to lower costs on everyday goods. By agreeing to lower the tariffs on imported beef and reduce prices for consumers, Trump infuriated ranchers and drew strong rebukes from Republican lawmakers and industry groups. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the largest trade group for cattle ranchers, said government intervention will only hurt ranchers and prevent long-term stability in the beef industry.

Trump’s decision to temporarily lift tariffs on beef were met with pushback from Republicans fighting to win tough elections in the midterms in rural areas. Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson, the Senate GOP nominee in her state, called the plan a bad idea. Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts, who is running for re-election, said on X that “short term policy shifts do not equal long term solutions.”

JBS has played a key role in helping shape Trump administration views, even before the recent executive order. Pilgrim’s Pride, the nation’s second-largest chicken processor, which is majority controlled by JBS, contributed $5 million to Trump’s inauguration, making it the biggest donor.

JBS has said that it has a long history of participating in the civic process and creating opportunities to provide safe, affordable food for American families.

The Justice Department is investigating the top four U.S. meatpackers—including JBS—over whether the companies are engaged in anticompetitive behavior. The companies have denied any wrongdoing and are struggling financially as cattle become more expensive to process in the U.S. Tyson Foods and JBS have closed plants after losing hundreds of millions of dollars processing beef.

For JBS, importing more of its Brazilian product into the U.S. would give the meatpacker a bigger share of the American market. Brazil sent about $1.5 billion worth of beef to the U.S. through the first six months of this year, up 10% from the year prior, according to Agriculture Department data.

JBS began as a family-owned slaughterhouse in the Brazilian countryside. It has since expanded to be one of the largest beef processors in the U.S. and Brazil, employing about 280,000 people in more than 20 countries.

Last year, the company listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, a goal it has long sought, hoping to draw a wider pool of investors and cement its image as an American meat giant.

Joesley Batista and his brother Wesley Batista are currently board members and major shareholders of JBS. The brothers were nearly sidelined after a corruption scandal in Brazil almost a decade ago, in which they admitted to bribing politicians and spent several months in jail. They separately settled U.S. corruption charges.

The company has said it now has a robust compliance program and that the brothers bring decades of operational experience.

The import plan from the Trump administration comes in response to a continuing shortage of cattle on American pastures. The supply shortage has driven up livestock prices, and in turn, pushed beef prices to record highs.

Trump’s plan calls for up to 300,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings to be imported into the U.S. over a 90-day period without a tariff. That total accounts for about 2% of the nation’s annual beef consumption.

A larger supply of lean meat from South America could temporarily lower prices for ground beef sold at grocery stores or found in fast-food restaurants. But it could also discourage ranchers from rebuilding their cattle herds, prolonging the supply shortage, according to analysts.

The announcement helped send cattle prices down, a move that could temper the profits that ranchers make on their animals. Feeder cattle futures, the price ranchers are paid by feedlots, are down about 9% over the past month, according to FactSet.

In May, the Trump administration floated a plan to suspend a tariff-rate quota applied to beef-exporting nations. But the plan was put on hold following an outcry from ranchers, administration officials, including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and some congressional Republicans, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Trump administration has taken several other actions to try to lower beef prices. It has announced plans to provide funding to boost smaller meatpacking operations to boost competition in the sector.

The Agriculture Department said in July it would reopen ports along the U.S.-Mexico border that had been closed to stem the spread of New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite. Meatpacking executives have said resuming the cattle trade was the fastest way to potentially lower beef prices.

The Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings in government roles, declining to disclose their assignments as they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter and corroborating material.

At least some of the influencers have been assigned to civilian roles that could lead to changes in policy, the people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Neither the Pentagon nor those involved have disclosed the government roles despite the Trump administration’s claims that they are running the most transparent Defense Department ever.

Those involved include Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel, people familiar with the matter said. Pentagon records reviewed by The Washington Post show that both have active official government email addresses as of this past week and are assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The email addresses include a “.civ” suffix, meaning they are labeled as civilian employees, rather than as military personnel or contractors.

Both served for decades in uniform and, since retiring, have turned from the military to conservative commentary. Maness has more than 135,000 followers on X, while Schlicter has nearly 620,000.

Another retired Army colonel and influencer, Thomas Anderson, was listed in Pentagon records earlier this year with a “.civ” email address and assigned to Tata’s office, according to people familiar with the matter and records reviewed by The Post. An attorney, he writes online under the pen name Cynical Publius and has more than 323,000 followers on X. He was no longer listed in Pentagon records late this past week, the people familiar with the issue said.

The assignments for all three have not previously been reported. Questions have been raised online about influencers’ connections with the Pentagon, including in an article last week by the Bulwark.

Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez declined to comment to The Post about whether any of the three are drawing a taxpayer-funded salary, what roles they have or how long those jobs are expected to last. Tata did not respond to a request for comment.

Maness and Schlichter did not respond to emails or other messages requesting comment. Anderson declined to comment in a short phone call.

The individuals are assigned as either “special government employees” or “highly qualified experts,” people familiar with the issue said. Schlicter appears in a government database with an “HQE” designation after his name, according to material reviewed by The Post.

SGEs are limited by law to working no more than 130 days in any 365-day period. Those with HQE status can work full- or part-time, with or without compensation, according to government guidance on the issue released in 2023. It was not clear what financial agreements were reached with Maness, Schlicter and Anderson, and when each of their assignments began.

Tata’s team has taken on a number of culture-war issues, including scrutinizing war colleges for “woke” ideology and reviewing how the Biden administration adopted covid vaccine mandates for U.S. troops.

Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and Army National Guard officer, has attempted to reshape the public discourse about Pentagon affairs. Last year, he imposed new restrictions on Pentagon press corps members that forced dozens of journalists out of the building and later introduced a new, primarily right-wing press corps to replace them.

The increased attention on the Pentagon’s influence efforts comes after another conservative influencer, Jennica Pounds, accused a State Department official this month on social media of attempting to entrap her into publishing government secrets. Pounds, writing under the pen name DataRepublican, posted text messages online that showed the official approached Pounds with documents to publish and tout as a journalistic scoop.

Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, later disclosed on social media that she was the official who had reached out to Pounds. Rogers posted the documents herself, saying it was not a “trap,” and Pounds later said that she regretted “making a public spectacle” and “pulling people I respect into the swirl.” Rogers has been nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America and other government-funded media.

The dustup was followed by the Pentagon and Pounds disclosing that she works as a special government employee for the Defense Department. She posted on social media that she became an employee in July, after holding a credential as a journalist in Hegseth’s new Pentagon press corps until June. Pounds has said on social media that she applied for a Pentagon press pass and received it in April.

Pounds did not respond to a request for comment.

The disclosure has roiled social media, where some fellow influencers have defended Pounds’s work amid criticism that she should have disclosed she was working for the government.

Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and Air Force veteran, posted that it appears the Pentagon “is using your tax dollars to hire influencers on X to put out partisan talking points.”

“How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government, and Donald Trump, and the Republican Party ... are actually special government employees?” said Kinzinger.

Maness, Schlicter and Anderson appeared on behalf of the Pentagon’s Senior Service College Task Force at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in May, two people familiar with the visit said. The task force was organized in the spring with the goal of rooting out ideology deemed “toxic” or “woke,” Hegseth said in March.

The task force has completed its research and prepared a report that has not yet been released, one of the people familiar with the visit said.

While in Carlisle, they met with students and professors over a number of days and asked questions about the performance of leaders like Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the people familiar with the visit said. Some students were uncertain how candid they should be and whether there would be negative consequences if administration officials did not like the answers, this person said.

The other person familiar with the visit said the task force members had concerns about the syllabus for a class focused on how military officers communicate with Congress.

Maness retired from the Air Force in 2011 and has run unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana. He is listed as the chairman of GatorPAC, a political action committee that says on its website that it wants to “drain the swamp” in Washington and find more military veterans to run for office. The PAC’s website also includes videos of an online political commentary show starring Maness.

In an article published last month by the conservative Daily Caller, Maness argues that Hegseth’s team needs to root out “disloyal” career employees in the department and laments “careerists who treat the Pentagon as their permanent fiefdom.” That article cites his decades of military experience, but does not say whether he is a current Pentagon employee.

In an article published Wednesday on the website Campus Reform, Maness attacked a decision made by Army leaders to pull back efforts to toughen academic requirements for college students in Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs. “Secretary Hegseth’s outrage is justified,” Maness wrote. The article likewise does not mention any government assignment.

Maness also had a letter to the editor published in The Post in July in which he defended Hegseth’s efforts to reduce the number of military officers who attend elite universities for fellowships. He describes himself there as a retired Air Force officer, but no government role is mentioned. A Post spokesperson said that Maness did not disclose any connection to the Pentagon before publication.

Schlicter is a columnist with the conservative site Townhall, writing and podcasting on politics, immigration and military affairs. On Aug. 6, he published a column calling Trump a “hero for finally fighting back against Iran.”

“He could have waltzed into the midterms, dragging Republicans behind him toward success,” Schlicter wrote. “But he had the courage to do what was necessary to stop these bastards before they made it impossible to prevent them from getting a [nuclear] bomb.”

On social media, Schlicter posted a video earlier this month of Hegseth praising sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has faced morale problems during a long deployment.

“We are,lucky to have @PeteHegseth,” Schlicter wrote on X on Aug. 14. He describes himself on X as a retired Army colonel, lawyer and columnist, but does not disclose current Pentagon employment.

On social media, Anderson has been a frequent critic of journalists, fellow veterans and others opposing the Trump administration and has defended Hegseth’s efforts to overhaul military affairs. Writing for the Federalist in April, he assessed that there is “a cancer in America’s military ranks, and it must be expunged before it’s too late.”

This past week, he repeatedly defended Pounds on X for serving as a special government employee as he also declined to answer questions from several people about whether he was an SGE employee, too.

“The law does not view such people the same as civil servants, and they are legally allowed to continue whatever other private endeavors they were undertaking,” Anderson wrote. “In many cases, they are prohibited from revealing their status because of the sensitive nature of their work.”

Another military influencer, John Konrad, also defended Pounds while noting he had discussions with the administration this spring about becoming a special government employee at the Pentagon. Konrad, a former member of the U.S. Merchant Marine and founder of the maritime website gCaptain, said that the Pentagon sought him out for a role and he later felt “ghosted.”

The Pentagon also brought on Jerry Dunleavy, a journalist with the conservative Just the News, to assist Hegseth’s team with an ongoing review of the fall of Afghanistan. The Pentagon disclosed Dunleavy’s involvement in May.

Dunleavy previously worked as an investigator for the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee during an earlier investigation of the collapse in Kabul and quit in protest, saying the committee had not gone far enough.

The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.

The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.

In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.

The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.

The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections.

Roughly two dozen states sued the government over the president’s executive order governing mail voting, which would require states to hand over voter information and would empower the Postal Service to block mail ballots from being sent or delivered in states that do not comply. The moves have especially alarmed Democrats, who fear the president could use the Postal Service to tip the scales of a midterm election that polls show currently favors their party. Mr. Trump has stated publicly that curtailing mail voting is good for Republicans.

A federal judge issued a ruling on Thursday blocking the Postal Service from proceeding after concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could spark chaos by changing rules fewer than 70 days before an election. The administration is appealing.

Meanwhile, the uptick in rejection rates for mail ballots this year could fuel the partisan battle. The ballots that were tossed because they arrived too late represent a fraction of the overall mail ballot total — the Postal Service typically delivers more than 95 percent of mail ballots on time. But the agency has curtailed its services in the face of budget shortfalls in recent years, leading to slower mail delivery across the country.

Election officials say the rise in rejections, along with the general sentiment out of Washington, has prompted them to scramble to put safeguards in place to ensure that voters’ ballots are counted.

In Colorado, Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state, has rapidly increased the number of drop boxes across the state — by 78 percent since 2018 — so voters can return their ballots without concerns of postal delays or interference.

“We did change the law last legislative session,” Ms. Griswold said in an interview. “Mail ballots are going out sooner, and drop boxes are going out sooner. That is in direct response to the uncertainty coming from D.C. and Trump’s attacks on our democracy.”

In a statement, The Postal Service countered claims that the agency has become unreliable by noting that over 95 percent of mail ballots have arrived on time in recent elections.

“There are any number of factors that may impact the timeliness of a returned ballot,” the statement said. “As such, our consistent message to voters who choose to vote by mail is to mail early.”

Following the 2020 election, when a deluge of voters opted to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic, the agency developed new procedures to prioritize on-time delivery for mail ballots. After a court case in 2021, the Postal Service agreed to maintain the new measures for all even-year federal elections through 2028.

William Hensley, a former election mail specialist at the Postal Service who helped establish the new procedures, said the fact that mail ballot delays were more prevalent in odd-year and primary elections suggested that the measures were effective. But he conceded that structural changes within the agency slowing service across the board were also affecting ballots.

As part of a 10-year-plan established in 2021 to shore up the Postal Service’s finances through structural changes, the agency set up regional distribution centers to process mail and increased the delivery standards for first-class mail, from three days to five.

The Postal Service further slowed down mail in 2024 when it implemented a centralized system that postmarks mail when it reaches regional centers, not when it first enters the mail stream. The delay has particularly affected mail voting, especially in states that rely on postmarks to determine if a ballot is valid.

These cost-cutting changes have so far struggled to make a substantial dent in the agency’s multibillion dollar deficit, but they have slowed the delivery of mail votes. Election officials are starting to notice.

In Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election in April, several hundred ballots arrived a day late in Dane County, home to Madison, the state capital, according to Scott McDonell, the county clerk.

“That was highly unusual,” he said. “In the past, we would only see a handful.”

In a survey by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, two-thirds of clerks reported observing problems with mail delivery times in that election.

“The worst mail delivery day of the week is Tuesday (unfortunately for elections!) and our office jokingly but sadly refers to it as ‘no mail Tuesday,’” read one submission from a clerk in Waukesha County.

Mr. McDonell, who is a Democrat, says he now tells voters to use drop boxes, vote early in person or mail their ballots at least two weeks before Election Day.

In Washington, a universal mail-voting state, more voters are using drop boxes than trusting the Postal Service with their ballots, said Stuart Holmes, the state’s elections director.

“The Postal Service, these are great people, hard-working people,” Mr. Holmes said about the state’s local postal employees. “But their operation has become unreliable.”

In Washington’s primary earlier this year, 75 percent of rejected mail ballots were tossed because they arrived too late.

Ricky Hatch, a Republican election official in Utah, a state that relies almost exclusively on mail voting, said he had noticed a nationwide increase of election officials encouraging voters to mail their ballots early because of Postal Service slowdowns.

“We’ve definitely morphed over time from going from ‘Hey, get your ballot in before the deadline’ to ‘Mail your ballot at least a week early, if you want to have it counted,’” Mr. Hatch said.

Now, he added, the advice is even more cautious: “Better yet, use a drop box.”

Milo Yiannopoulos, Right-Wing Agitator, Deported Home to U.K.

Mr. Yiannopoulos, an early supporter of President Trump and vocal supporter of mass deportations, was himself sent back to his home country, part of a long fall from right-wing grace.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/29/us/politics/milo-yiannopoulos-deported.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9VA.K48V._El8PYkrO71v&smid=url-share

The U.S.–Israeli war has caused massive environmental devastation, adding to the long history of American wars with toxic legacies.