The United States Postal Service (USPS) is no longer pursuing Donald Trump’s plan to dramatically slash eligibility for mail-in voting, essentially dooming the President’s controversial effort to prevent Republicans from losing the midterm elections.
The decision was confirmed after the US Supreme Court rejected Trump’s executive order mandating that USPS dispatch ballots only to voters cleared by a hastily developed verification process.
Trump has long railed against mail-in voting, claiming without evidence that the practise enables widespread fraud, and blames postal votes for his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
The impact of heatwaves on NHS hospital patients revealed
The extreme heatwaves this year took a severe toll on patients, an NHS survey has found.
The effects of the heatwaves
A poll for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) found descriptions of cancer patients dripping with sweat during chemotherapy, and one nurse reported seeing maggots in wounds.
The record-breaking heat meant patients came to harm, the RCN said, as it called for more Government investment so hospitals can better cope in warm weather.
A closer look at the survery
How many were involved?
2,471 nursing staff were polled for the survey this summer.
The findings
Staff found high temperatures affected care, with examples of poorer outcomes for patients.
Government response
74 per cent of those polled said the Government wasn’t taking sufficient action to reduce the impact of climate change on the NHS.
How the heat affected care
The survey detailed the shocking conditions in hospital wards during the heatwaves, with one children’s ward in Yorkshire reaching 44°C.
One nurse in a South East NHS hospital said high temperatures meant “wounds heal slower, mobility declines, and the simple act of resting becomes a battle against suffocating heat”.
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What RCN chief Professor Nicola Ranger said
This testimony reveals the devastating impact of extreme heat, with increased death, deterioration, and conditions in services which, frankly, are an assault on people’s right to safe care.
Ranger also said that the effects of climate change mean “the clock is now ticking to accelerate investment in hospitals.”
The real AI threat to humanity is a super-virus created in a garage
You may have heard the alarming claim that there’s more than a 10 per cent chance humanity will be wiped out by super-intelligent AI.
This assertion, made by a researcher at Anthropic, was scant on detail about exactly how the technology could kill us all.
Threat of lethal pathogen
But this week I heard about one possible way: AI could be used to make a lethal pathogen and trigger another pandemic. The warnings came at a press conference held by experts from Imperial College London.
So, what might such an AI-created bioweapon look like and how could we stop it from being created?
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Starting template
- One reason this threat has to be taken seriously is pandemics with high fatality rates have previously arisen naturally without help from super-intelligent AI.
- The UK Health Security Agency made a list of 24 groups of pathogens that have most potential to trigger a dangerous pandemic.
- The agency drew up this list so researchers can focus on developing vaccines – but they could also be the starting template for an AI-designed super-bug.
- In the past few decades, it has become more possible for anyone to dabble in genetic engineering of viruses or bacteria, in the so-called “garage biology” hobbyist movement.
You can now even buy a self-contained kit that lets you insert a gene from jellyfish into harmless bacteria and watch your genetically engineered colonies of bugs glow in the dark as they multiply.
How close is AI to designing a deadly virus?
The most advanced generative AI programmes have certainly proved capable of some impressive feats, such as solving previously insurmountable maths problems, including finding a solution last week to one called the Navier-Stokes problem concerning the movement of fluids.
Russians go to polls for first time in years – what to expect
Russians are heading to the polls for the first time in years in a tightly controlled vote.
Here is what to expect.
What are Russians voting for?
Around 111 million Russian voters go to the ballot boxes for the first regional election since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The vote will decide a new State Duma, Russia’s lower house, but sources inside the country say the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
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What to expect
The three-day vote begins on Friday, with results expected after polls close on Sunday.
The parties involved
Supposed opposition to Putin’s United Russia includes the Communist Party, Liberal Democrats and A Just Russia.
Fixed outcome
United Russia already controls more than two-thirds of the seats.
Voting irregularities
- The previous election in 2021 was criticised for irregularities by the primary independent election watchdog, Golos.
- A survey conducted by a state pollster last month also showed United Russia leading other parties with 37 per cent support, ahead of the Communist Party with 11.6 per cent.
- The only open anti-war party, Yabloko, was banned from running and had no seats anyway.
His push to restrict access to mail-in ballots was aimed at hampering Democrats – a greater proportion of whom vote by mail – and giving his party an edge in elections where candidates are being hampered by rising living costs and a deeply unpopular war, begun by Trump himself.
There is now a growing sense of panic among some in the party as the prospect of losing control of both chambers of Congress increases.
What was Trump’s plan and why did it fail?
In March, Trump signed an executive order which directed the federal agencies to create lists of citizens for every US state.
Those lists were then to be handed over to the USPS, which was, in turn, instructed only to provide mail-in ballots to citizens named on the rolls.
The order also required the USPS to develop a uniform envelope style for all postal votes, complete with a barcode which was intended to speed up processing.
The USPS could have declined to deliver any mail-in ballots to states which refused to comply.
Trump and supporters of the move argued the new rules were “common sense” and would have ensured greater “election integrity” by preventing fraud, despite studies showing such cases are exceptionally rare.
Critics argued the order would have illegally disenfranchised thousands of voters and was designed to hand Republicans, whose supporters generally tend to favour in-person voting, an advantage.
They also noted the order appeared to circumvent the US Constitution, which hands the power to regulate elections exclusively to states and not the president or Congress.
A host of states sued to prevent the USPS from implementing the new rules, arguing, among other reasons, the changes came too close to the midterm elections to be effectively introduced and risked causing chaos.
Several lower courts agreed, placing injunctions on the plan and prompting the Trump administration to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Then, on Tuesday, the US’ highest judicial authority ensured Trump’s effort was all but dead in the water, ruling it was probable the push to implement the order would fail in court.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday evening, the head of the USPS confirmed efforts to introduce the new rules had ended in the wake of the decision.
“We’re not doing anything,” postmaster general David Steiner said.
Why are Republicans panicked by Trump’s failure?
Trump’s decision to pursue changes to postal voting rules was reflective of his high-risk approach to contesting the midterms.
Republicans are facing major headwinds due to rising living costs and the President’s deeply unpopular war with Iran, while the party in power has also historically lost ground in non-presidential contests.
Polling has shown affordability is the dominant issue for voters and Democrats are hammering home ties between rising pump prices and the Iran war, as well as the effects of Trump’s tariffs on businesses and consumers.
Instead of moving to address those concerns, Trump has been focused on pushing some states to re-draw electoral maps in ways which disadvantage Democrats and embarking on a new trade war with Canada that could further push up the price of some US products.
He has also launched a staunch defence of AI and the construction of data centres, which have increasingly become a source of community pushback in key districts worried about the implications for power and water supplies.
Trump’s apparent disconnect from voters’ concerns is contributing to a deepening sense of unease among Republicans, and his failure to cement an advantage through changing mail-in voting has further exposed the party by diverting time and attention away from its core messaging.
Compounding fears are dire polls showing the President’s brand is increasingly toxic.
Marquette University Law School found just 37 per cent of US adults approved of Trump’s performance and Fox News reported 60 per cent of voters believed his decision to begin the Iran war was wrong.
Despite this, the President has pleaded with supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot” and was the driving force behind a Republican midterm convention in Texas to drum up enthusiasm.
Most projections give Democrats a reasonable chance of claiming the six seats they need to regain control of the House, but winning the Senate is also increasingly within reach.
In a sign of the challenge faced by Republicans, the party’s Senate candidate for Texas, Ken Paxton, is trailing his Democratic rival, James Talarico, in a state which has not elected a Democrat for over three decades.
Trump carried Texas by a double-digit margin in 2024, and the state was chosen to host his midterm convention in part to boost Paxton’s standing among voters.
The prospect of a Democrat win in what has been a Republican stronghold has served to strengthen fears that Trump’s actions could ultimately cost the party control of Congress.