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After 'Bonkers' 5th Circuit Ruling, Supreme Court to Hear Mail-In Ballot Case
While experts hope the justices will reverse an "objectively insane" appellate decision, a ruling in favor of the Republican National Committee could reduce the rights of Americans who vote by mail.
Nov 10, 2025
As President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned leaders who tried to overturn his 2020 loss, the US Supreme Court took up the national Republican Party's argument that counting mailed ballots shortly after Election Day violates federal law.
Voting by mail has long been a target of the GOP president, who has falsely claimed that the practice fuels voter fraud. This case concerns a Mississippi law that allows mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days, which three Trump appointees on the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit struck down last year.
That lawsuit was brought by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Mississippi Libertarian Party. Another Republican, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch‚ is asking the nation's top court to reject the 5th Circuit's decision, arguing that it "defies statutory text, conflicts with this court's precedent, and—if left to stand—will have destabilizing nationwide ramifications."
The Supreme Court—which has a conservative supermajority that includes three Trump appointees—agreed to hear Watson v. RNC and decide "whether the federal Election Day statutes preempt a state law that allows ballots that are cast by federal Election Day to be received by election officials after that day."
The Supreme Court will review an objectively insane 5th Circuit decision that prohibited states from counting ballots that were mailed before Election Day but arrive shortly after. (More than half the states have such laws.) www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 9:44 AM
The Associated Press pointed out Monday that "Mississippi is among 18 states and the District of Columbia that accept mailed ballots received after Election Day as long as the ballots are postmarked on or before that date," and "an additional 14 states allow the counting of late-arriving ballots from some eligible voters, including overseas US service members and their families."
Legal experts have condemned the appellate decision as "awful" and "bonkers." The justices are expected to hear arguments early next year and issue a ruling by the end of June, months before the crucial midterm elections.
National Vote At Home Institute executive director Barbara Smith Warner welcomed their decision to take the case and potentially reverse the 5th Circuit's "upside-down" opinion, telling Democracy Docket: "The idea that a ballot that is postmarked on or by Election Day and received afterwards... is like voting after Election Day? That is ridiculous."
Unfortunately I am here to tell you: it's time to worry about what the Supreme Court is going to do to mail ballots postmarked by election day that arrive after election day, in states across the country. This could be enormous.www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
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— jen rice (@jenrice.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Alexia Kemerling, director of accessible democracy at the American Association of People with Disabilities, was also hopeful.
"We really hope that the Supreme Court takes the responsibility seriously to make sure that every voter can use their power," she said. "'The millions of voters with disabilities who cannot vote in person or voters who are overseas who cannot vote in person—this is their only way to participate in the system. They should not be disenfranchised for the ways that our system moves slowly."
The New York Times noted that Watson v. RNC "is a potential blockbuster and adds to the court's other elections and voting cases for the term, which include a case about who can sue to challenge Illinois' mail-in ballot rules and a challenge to the Louisiana congressional district map that could gut a remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act."
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Election Day Sweep for Dems Just Predictable Blue State Wins? Local, State Races Tell Different Story
In addition to high-profile victories in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, Democrats came away with upset wins in Georgia and Mississippi.
Nov 05, 2025
Leading Republicans such as US House Speaker Mike Johnson and right-wing media outlets like Fox News are trying to downplay Democrats' sweeping victories in key elections held on Tuesday, even though many of the party's victories came in areas that are not traditional Democratic strongholds.
Speaking in Washington, DC on Wednesday morning, Johnson dismissed the Democratic wins as entirely predictable given the recent voting histories of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.
"There's no surprises," Johnson said. "What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night's election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what's to come, that's what history teaches us."
Mike Johnson: "What happened last night is blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night's election results." pic.twitter.com/AO72p71Zsj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2025
But despite Johnson's claims, Democrats on Tuesday also won major victories in two southern states that supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 general election.
As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson ousted incumbent Republicans serving on Georgia's Public Service Commission, which is responsible for regulating utility prices in the state.
According to The New York Times, this will mark the first time that any Democrat has served on the commission since 2007, and it came after the commission signed off on six rate increases for the state's largest electricity provider over the past two years.
The Times also reported that Georgia Republicans are worried that the twin losses in Public Service Commission are an ill omen for next year's elections, when the GOP will seek to oust Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and maintain its hold on the governor's mansion.
In an interview with Politico, one Republican strategist said that the Democrats' wins in Georgia showed the challenges facing the GOP in getting low-propensity Trump voters to the polls in elections where he is not on the ballot.
"The one thing that would worry me, besides making sure you hold the House, is looking at how Democrats were able to fire up their base in some of these local elections in Georgia," they said.
In Mississippi, meanwhile, Democrats broke the GOP's supermajority in the state Senate for the first time in over a decade by flipping three seats. According to Mississippi Free Press, losing the Senate supermajority will make it significantly harder for the Mississippi Republicans to "override a governor’s veto, propose constitutional amendments, and execute certain procedural actions."
While Democrats in the state celebrated the wins, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Cheikh Taylor warned that it could be undone if the US Supreme Court strikes down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that has historically been used to create of majority-minority districts to ensure Black voters in southern states have proper representation.
"Last night's victory proves that Mississippi is no longer a foregone conclusion—we are a battleground state," Taylor said. "But this win was only possible because the Voting Rights Act ensures fair representation. If the Supreme Court dismantles these protections, we risk silencing the very voices that made last night’s historic outcome possible. As voters continue to reject Trump's agenda in 2026 and 2027, we must protect the fundamental right that makes change possible: The right to vote."
While the wins in Georgia and Mississippi were impressive on their own, data analyst G. Elliott Morris found that shifts toward Democrats weren't confined to any individual state or city, but were incredibly broad.
Writing on his Substack page, Morris revealed that "almost every single county" in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia in this week's elections moved toward Democrats compared to how they voted in 2024.
"What we saw last night was a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections," Morris explained. "With few exceptions, voters everywhere moved to the left from 2024 to 2025."
What's more, Morris found that the shift toward Democrats wasn't simply the result of having lower turnout elections, which typically are beneficial to the party out of power.
"Average turnout in [New Jersey and Virginia] was close to 80% of 2024 levels, which is impressive for an off-off-year election—and the swing to Democrats there was still 7-8 points," he explained. "So I wouldn’t dismiss the results of last night just because low-turnout-propensity voters stayed home. There's evidence of both persuasion and turnout effects in last night’s contests."
David Smith, the Guardian Washington, DC bureau chief, writes in his analysis of election day that "the results were in part a referendum on Trump, whose approval rating has never been lower," and he added that the president was displaying stark political vulnerabilities just one year into his second term.
"His authoritarian grandstanding is a show of weakness rather than strength," he wrote. "From ICE raids and tariffs to his $300 million White House ballroom, his presidency is deeply unpopular. Are you better off than you were a year ago? Voters said no."
Even still, warned Smith, it's important that Democratic leaders don't mistake anger at Trump for glowing enthusiasm for their work atop the party, which remains at historic lows.The results on Tuesday were "never going to solve the riddle" of which direction the Democrats should head, he wrote, with both "progressives and moderates" provided "fodder to make a case" for their respective approach to politics.
For progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who spoke to MSNBC from New York at Mamdani's victory party, the Democrats need to understand that the party "does not have one face," but that everyone who wants to defeat Trump and the fascist Republicans "all understand the assignment" before them.
“Our assignment everywhere is to send the strongest fighters for the working class wherever possible," she said. "In some places, like Virginia, for the gubernatorial seat, that’s going to look like Abigail Spanberger. In New York City, unequivocally it is Zohran Mamdani.”
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Red States Top List of Those With Biggest Tax Giveaways to Millionaires and Billionaires
“These tax cuts are not only fiscally reckless but also deeply inequitable."
Oct 16, 2025
A progressive think tank has found that America's wealthiest citizens aren't just benefiting from the federal tax cuts passed in Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act this past summer, but from tax giveaways offered by Republican-run states.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) released a new analysis on Thursday showing that five states—Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Oklahoma—this year have enacted income tax cuts for families that earn over $1 million per year that are projected to collectively reduce their state governments' revenues by $2.2 billion per year once fully implemented.
The two biggest tax cuts for the wealthy came in Mississippi and Oklahoma, both of which have voted to phase out their state's income taxes over the span of several years. Once the income tax is fully repealed in those two states, ITEP estimates that millionaires living in them will pay $130,000 less per year.
ITEP also poked holes in any Republican claims that the tax cuts they passed were a benefit for "working families," and showed how the GOP's policy is overwhelmingly tilted to benefit the wealthy.
"The average millionaire tax cut is more than 50 times the size of the average cut for non-millionaires in each of the five states included in this report," the think tank noted. "In Mississippi and Ohio the average tax cuts for millionaires are over 100 times the size of those for non-millionaires."
The group found that the tax cuts passed in Missouri were particularly egregious when it comes to benefiting millionaires. As reported by the Missouri Independent, Missouri lawmakers over the summer made their state the first in the nation to eliminate taxes on capital gains, which is estimated to slash state revenues by more than $100 million per year.
According to ITEP, this tax cut is projected to deliver a $43,000 average annual benefit to Missouri families making over $1 million per year, and an $80 average annual benefit to Missouri's non-millionaire households.
Aidan Davis, ITEP's state policy director, expressed dismay at how much these state governments were willing to give to their wealthiest residents, even as their own state budgets face significant cuts to programs such as Medicaid the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, both of which help low-income Americans.
"These tax cuts are not only fiscally reckless but also deeply inequitable," Davis explained. "At a time when state budgets are under immense pressure, it's indefensible to hand millionaires five- and six-figure annual tax cuts while too many families struggle with affording the basics."
Dylan Grundman O’Neill, senior analyst at ITEP, argued that these states' policies "double down on inequality" and "prioritize millionaires while putting critical services like education, healthcare, and infrastructure at risk for everyone else."
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