2026-08-14 19:30:00
When was the last time you played? Took part in an enjoyable activity for the sake of it, with no particular outcome? A moment where you laughed, felt awe, curiosity, creativity? Where time flew by? If you’re over the age of, say, 7, your answer is probably not recently.
According to Mia Sundstrom, CEO of the National Institute for Play, an organization that studies play and champions research-backed playful policies, American society is in a bit of a play drought. Attention spans are shrinking, the country is more polarized than ever, and some people might be more comfortable communicating with AI than other humans. “Our world is really overwhelming, and what we’re starting to see is these almost spontaneous bursts of playfulness infiltrate back into our society almost as a rebellion against the things that feel really hard and scary right now,” Sundstrom told Vox.
That desire for levity might explain the proliferation of “whimsical” online content and unconventional workout classes and events, Sundstrom said. In other words, play, which she defined as both a state (marked by experimentation and risk-taking) and a disposition (a curious, creative, and optimistic way of moving throughout the world).
Playfulness benefits us all, not just kids. Playful people perceive less stress and have higher well-being, and life satisfaction. It also just feels good to partake in an activity that takes you out of the difficulties of life, if just for a little while. To help push back against the forces of seriousness, Sundstrom outlines three easy ways to imbue your life with more play.
Play is highly subjective: What one person considers enjoyable might be another’s personal hell. And just because an activity brings you a moderate amount of enjoyment doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for you. (Take mindlessly scrolling on your phone, for instance.) To be a more playful person, you need to consider — or remember — what makes you feel a little silly. The National Institute for Play developed six “play styles” to help people determine what activities light them up. For example, “creators” play through art, music, design, and performance while “competitors” like playing games or sports.
If you struggle to even pinpoint your play style, Sundstrom suggests recalling past memories of play. When was the last time you truly lost track of time or laughed so hard you cried with people you loved? What were you doing?
“Try and recall that vividly, because play is who we are before the world tells us who we have to be,” she said. “Whatever you loved to do early on, there’s a good chance somewhere inside of you that is still in there and is a great little spark for you to re-access play.” It’s likely you gradually stopped these playful hobbies, perhaps due to the demands of adult life, and picking them back up with no expectation can put you in touch with your younger self.
Based on your play style, you might consider low- or no-cost upgrades to your physical space to make play easier. “In physical spaces, the fastest and easiest things you can do are how can you add bright colors or something that feels inspiring to you, whether that’s a picture of your favorite place or a memory that jogs back play, something that is a visual cue to you that brings you back to a play state,” Sundstrom said. You might keep some scrap paper handy to doodle while you’re on the phone, use brightly colored files to organize your important documents, or use a colorful keyboard instead of a standard one.
Kids can make any space more playful. If you have children in your life, try to adopt their mindset: the curiosity, the wonder. And if you don’t have little ones, take inspiration from a childlike version of yourself and make decisions from their point of view, Sundstrom said.
Many adults, especially moms, feel pressure to curate a high-octane play experience for kids, Sundstrom said. But a more playful environment can simply incorporate an inside joke, a wink whenever you leave the room, or a silly way of greeting each other.
Once you’ve figured out, say, adventuring and new experiences are what make you feel alive (also known as the “explorer” play style), what tiny measures can you take to regularly engage in play?
“Even 30 seconds of a dance break or belting your favorite song or creating a handshake with somebody as you enter or exit a room, that is enough to create that play spark and to start those brain activations that do foster the deeper creativity and adaptability and resilience that build the play mindset,” Sundstrom said.
The best places to infuse play are during moments of boredom, Sundstrom said. To allow yourself space to be bored, put your phone in another room during any downtime and when you would ordinarily feel the urge to pick up your device, do something playful instead. Anything from practicing an accent or turning on a random radio station and imagining what the musical artist looks like.
The world may be serious, but individuals can take ownership over how much whimsy and levity they bring to it. Who knows? You might make someone else’s day more playful, too.
2026-08-14 19:00:00
Earlier this summer, Vox set up two big bug traps in New York City — like, literal traps that catch bugs. Our goal was to try to discover a new insect species right in the middle of the city because the bulk of them are still unknown to science.
We now have some exciting, albeit preliminary, results to share.
During the month of June — the only month we’ve analyzed so far — our traps captured an estimated 12,000 insect specimens, which we sent to a lab at the University of Guelph in Canada for analysis. The lab, known as the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, pulled out specimens across three groups: scuttle flies and two kinds of wasps known as parasitoids, which lay their eggs in other insects. We’re focusing on these groups, because they’re considered “dark taxa,” meaning that most species within them are likely still undiscovered.
That left us with just under 1,000 specimens from June to investigate further.
From there, the lab sequenced a short section of DNA from each specimen, known as a barcode. Those DNA barcodes are unique identifiers for individual organisms, and scientists use them to sort specimens. When individuals have very similar barcodes, that often means they are the same species.
In late July, the insect trap we set up in Central Park — which is about 5 feet long and 4 feet tall — suddenly disappeared. We have no idea where it went. Luckily, we had a spare trap.
Such are the challenges of sampling in a big city.
The other major hurdle was figuring out how to ship boxes full of bugs to Canada, where the DNA barcoding lab is based. I have unfortunately become an expert in international shipping laws; a frequent visitor of a Brooklyn UPS Store (a nightmare); and friendly with an inspection agent at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees animal exports.
Science!
Most of the barcodes from our specimens appear to be similar to barcodes of insects that scientists have already collected and sequenced. There’s a slim chance that these are members of undiscovered species.
But there were striking exceptions: Our wasps and flies yielded more than two dozen barcode groups that are, according to a preliminary review, quite different. They are unlike anything that exists in the big genetic database, known as BOLD, which is essentially a massive library of biodiversity. That means that they may represent new species.
Now, following further analysis by taxonomists, we have a strong indication that at least a few of those barcode groups may, indeed, be new species. And this was after just one month of looking!
Before we know if we have a true discovery to announce, we want to be certain that these species are actually new. That takes hard work, for which we are leaning on Emily Hartop, an entomologist at Norway’s NTNU University Museum, and University of Guelph researchers Ranjith AP and Paul Hebert. They will verify that no one has already described the organisms matching these specimens and then publish a formal description, along with a name, in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. At that point, we’ll be able to say with more certainty that the bugs we caught here in New York City are, in fact, new to science.
In the meantime, the traps remain open, and the freezer in my apartment will continue — to my husband’s disgust — filling up with ethanol-soaked bugs.
You can find more information about Vox’s quest to discover a new species here.
2026-08-14 18:00:00
There’s a lot of discussion about Jewish voters in politics this cycle.
With Democrats embroiled in loud arguments over Israel and Gaza, Republicans have been hoping to capture more of the Jewish vote by linking criticism of Israel to antisemitism. “How a Jewish person can vote for a Democrat is beyond me,” President Donald Trump said last month. His administration has made cracking down on anti-Israel campus activists — a top early priority — and has called Democrats “Palestinian” or “jihadists.”
Meanwhile, Democrats have pointed to the rise of openly antisemitic influencers within the conservative movement, which has become a divisive topic on the right that also runs into debates over Israel, as a pressing threat to Jews.
But what do Jewish voters themselves actually want? That’s a nuanced question, and one that we have fresh polling and voting data on to help us dissect this cycle.
American Jews aren’t a large voting bloc — just over 2 percent of the population — but there are also significant communities in some key swing states and competitive districts. As a matter of partisan politics, Jews have historically voted Democratic by wide margins, but Republicans have long hoped to peel them off, often by emphasizing their support for Israel. Though it’s been a common refrain from pro-Israel and Republican activists for decades that a GOP realignment was just around the corner, it wasn’t until the 2024 presidential election that these voices got a firm boost. Nationally, and in local communities, Jewish support for the Democratic Party seemed to drop slightly.
Elections since then have been difficult to parse. In last year’s New York City mayoral election, for example, Zohran Mamdani won about 33 percent of Jewish voters, compared to the 63 percent that went for Andrew Cuomo in a race where divisions over Israel and antisemitism featured strongly. In the primary, many Cuomo voters also backed Mamdani ally Brad Lander, a Jewish progressive who was sharply critical of Israel — and who went on to easily defeat Rep. Dan Goldman in a congressional primary in a heavily Jewish district this year while running to his left on Israel issues. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, left-wing Democrat Analilia Mejia won a special election for a House seat while harshly criticizing Israel. But her candidacy led some Jewish strongholds to swing massively toward Republicans.
So, what happens to the Jewish vote in the 2026 midterms? This segment of voters is no monolith, experts say, and finding the “right” way to talk about Israel is no guarantor of electoral success. Polls show Jewish voters hold competing priorities in their minds: They’re increasingly concerned about antisemitism and their personal safety in America, and they hold complex and divergent views on Israel, which often is not a defining voting issue, even as it seems to be the dominant way strategists and pundits talk about this electorate.
Here’s what the latest data has to say about what Jewish voters want and how their politics are changing this cycle.
Aside from Black voters, there have traditionally been no more loyal Democratic voters than Jewish Americans. Since 2008, between 60 and 80 percent of these voters picked the Democratic candidate, while about 60 percent have consistently identified with the party over the last two decades.
That changed slightly after 2024, when exit polls suggested a six-point swing toward Donald Trump compared to 2020. Jewish communities in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, meanwhile, shifted more dramatically — which analysts for the election data site Split Ticket argued last year represented a 5 to 10 percentage-point swing against Democrats.
There are plenty of arguments over how and why this happened — pollsters and experts I spoke with told me that, despite the majority of Jewish American voters still siding with Democrats, the voting group mirrored other traditionally Democratic voting groups’ swing against the incumbent.
“Biden won the election, Harris lost the election,” Tali deGroot, the national political director of J Street, told Vox. “That means that every single community likely saw shifts with fewer people voting for the Democrat.”
Others argue it was a return to more of a baseline of voter behavior. 2020 was the aberration, with remarkably high support for Biden because of pandemic conditions.
But what still stands out beyond these trendlines is the steady support Democrats receive from these voters — whether because of the high level of college education among these constituents (a blue-coded trait in the Trump era), the geographic location of these voters (primarily in Democratic states like New York and California), or the socially liberal beliefs many of these voters hold (Jews historically support abortion rights, for example).
Even heading into 2026, Democrats still hold overwhelmingly strong support from these voters, Jim Gerstein, a founding partner of the polling firm GBAO, told me.
“What’s remarkable is actually how consistent Jewish voting behavior and political beliefs and values have been for years and still through today,” Gerstein said. “You have these massive developments in domestic, international, political events, actual things that happen in the real world, and the Jewish vote is just remarkably stable.”
Entering 2026, Gerstein argues, two dynamics remain at play that are preserving their Democratic lean. The long-held liberal ideological bent of Jewish Americans, along with the issues they prioritize, broadly align with the Democratic Party. And, on the other end, their antipathy to Trump and the Republican party is “intense,” a force that pushes these voters away from the GOP, even if there were broader reasons to realign.
“Not only do they identify with the Democrats, they share positions on the major issues, shared values,” Gerstein said. “And they also have a strong opposition to the Republican Party and leading Republican figures.”
These dynamics also reveal themselves when looking at various denominations within the Jewish electorate. The largest segments — nondenominational, Reform, and Conservative Jews — lean heavily Democratic and have remained more or less steadily Democratic over the last few years. A smaller segment, Orthodox Jews — who make up about a tenth of the Jewish population but are growing — lean toward Republicans, are more strongly supportive of Trump and Israel, and have been shifting right over the last five years.
“The Orthodox population is in its own political world relative to the rest of the Jewish population,” Gerstein said. “To the extent there’s any shifting [broadly], there’s been some shifting among Orthodox to make them even more Republican. That is offset by the fact that the Reform population is much larger. They are extraordinarily Democratic, and if anything, are moving a little bit more Democratic.”
Polls of Jewish voters this year suggests these dynamics are largely baked into the electorate at this point. A national AP-NORC survey of voters, with an oversampling of Jewish Americans, in June found that Jewish adults’ approval of how Trump is handling his job is nearly 10 points lower than among all American adults generally.
“We see that same pattern on most of the issues that we asked about, such as the economy, immigration, and Iran,” Emily Alvarez, a senior research scientist at NORC, told me. “But when it comes to his handling of Israel, they’re actually slightly more likely than the general public to approve. It’s a very small difference, but it is a difference, and it’s kind of a reversal of that trend that we saw with the other issues.”
NORC’s polling also suggests that domestic, kitchen table issues continue to be the dominant priorities of these voters generally. More than 80 percent of Jewish adults say the economy and healthcare are top priorities for them this year. About 56 and 66 percent say Israel or foreign policy are important concerns.
This June finding roughly matches the priorities that two other pollsters identified this year. The Mellman Group’s polling for the Jewish Electorate Institute from March found that Jewish voters largely say Democrats are better aligned with their views on abortion rights, healthcare, fair elections, and supporting the middle class.
And polling from GBAO on behalf of the Jewish Voters Resource Center in the spring found that the future of democracy (37 percent) and the cost of living/affordability (32 percent) are the top two issue priorities of Jewish voters, broadly speaking. Concerns over antisemitism round out the top three (25 percent).
Fear of discrimination and antisemitism is the biggest unifying concern for Jewish adults. When GBAO asked respondents about dealbreaker issues, 20 percent cited antisemitism as being their red line for supporting a candidate. And AP-NORC’s polling found that 62 percent of Jewish adults feel they are less safe than before October 7.
And while Jewish voters tend to be more aligned with Democrats on issues, the polling also found they remain wary of partisan politics — a common trait among many demographics in recent cycles.
“Jewish Americans really feel a sense of political dissatisfaction. They don’t feel particularly well supported by either political party. Very few say Democrats or Republicans support them well,” Alvarez said. “Republicans tend to feel a lot better supported by Republicans, and then they feel really supported by President Trump, but then far fewer Democrats feel the same way about their own party or about the president.”
It’s hard to disentangle the effect of the Israel-Gaza war from the current political environment for Jewish voters.
Sam Markstein, the political director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told me that October 7 was a defining moment for many Jewish voters who had preexisting misgivings about the Democratic Party. Changing political and public opinion on Israel and acts of violence against Jewish people and at places of worship, as well as shifts among Democrats and the left’s broader tension with AIPAC, suddenly made safety and antisemitism more pressing issues.
“After October 7, American Jews focused a lot more on their safety,” Markstein told me. “The main questions we heard, time and time, was who would best keep us safe, who would stand up for our students on the college campus quad, who would make us feel better about walking with our young kids to shul on Saturday morning, who would actually stand with the Jewish community and empower us to wear our Stars of David in public and not have to hide it.”
While concerns about antisemitism are widespread, views on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself are nuanced, particularly among Jewish Democrats, various pollsters told me.
AP-NORC’s polling, for example, found that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was broadly disliked by American Jews, with six-in-10 adults expressing unfavorable views. By contrast, Mamdani, the New York City mayor who recently explored arresting Netanyahu, was viewed favorably by 44 percent of Jews, with 39 percent expressing an unfavorable view. 30 percent of Jews said they believed Israel had committed genocide in its war in Gaza, while 49 percent said it had not.
One important wrinkle that’s often divided Israel critics is the context of that criticism. Many Jews are concerned about Israel’s security and direction and hope to see a new government with a stronger commitment to forging peace with Palestinians and neighboring states. Michael Bloomfield, a lead pollster and managing director for the Mellman Group, told me that “what often gets forgotten is that almost all American Jews, 86 percent, consider themselves pro-Israel,” including a similar share of Jewish Democrats.
But a rising segment of the left — including candidates like Abdul El-Sayed — often describe Israel’s founding vision of a homeland for Jews as inherently oppressive and sometimes calls for replacing the country with a secular and binational Arab-Jewish state. By contrast, New York’s Brad Lander, also on the left, describes himself as a “liberal Zionist” who wants a peaceful two-state solution that preserves Israel’s existence.
Polling this year, sponsored by the Jewish Electorate Institute, found that, while many Jewish Democrats are critical of Israeli government policies and the US partnership with Israel in the war in Iran, they are still strongly supportive of Israel as a state.
Overall, nearly nine in 10 American Jews describe themselves as pro-Israel, they found, but only about a quarter, 23 percent, consider themselves both pro-Israel and supportive of Israeli government policies. Six in 10 are pro-Israel and critical, half of whom are critical of “some” and another half who are critical of “many” policies. That broadly aligns with partisan identification. While 84 perfect of Jewish Democrats are “pro-Israel,” 73 percent of them are critical of Israeli policies. Republicans, a smaller share overall, are less likely to be critical.
There are also differences based on religious and cultural identity within the Jewish electorate, apparent in the NORC polling. Jews with a religious affiliation or strong attachment to Israel as part of their religious identity tend to be more supportive of Israel’s actions than secular Jews. About half of those with religious affiliation say the Gaza military campaign is justified, while a quarter believe Israel has committed genocide, compared to about two in 10 secular Jews who say the Gaza campaign is justified, and 4 in 10 who agree with the genocide charge. Three-quarters of that cohort say they are “not too” or “not at all” emotionally attached to Israel.
While concerns about antisemitism are rising, there’s room for nuance, Bloomfield told me.
“There is a policy debate about how much aid Israel should get, there’s a policy debate about where our relationship should be,” Bloomfield told me. “That is different than the worry when it gets to antisemitism and feeling uncomfortable in the Democratic Party.” The Mellman poll for JEI found that a majority of American Jews agree with the statement that “too many supporters of Israel claim any criticism of Israel is antisemitism as a way to avoid legitimate debate over Israeli policy.”
Nearly half of Jewish Republicans (47 percent) agree with that, along with 59 percent of Democrats. At the same time, 83 percent of Jewish Americans agree that “too many critics of Israel use tropes and generalizations about Jews to play into antisemitism, whether they mean to or not.”
Those nuanced views speak to the moment of uncertainty that many Jewish Democrats feel right now, he said. Israel, and the US relationship with it, does not dominate their vote choice or decision-making, but the way the party’s rising leaders, activist class, and press talk about it may become a bigger pressure point later this cycle. In the latest Mellman/JEI polling, few Jews say they’ve been following the discourse and debate over AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups’ spending in primary contests. Some 62 percent of all Jews say they have not heard much — including a majority of Jewish Democrats.
That number has likely gone up since then, given high-profile contests like Michigan’s Senate primary this month, which featured extensive arguments about pro-Israel spending and whether criticizing them shaded into antisemitism. And the salience of these debates may change in either direction depending on the news. Democrats could pursue a more aggressive policy to pressure Israel if they win the House, for example, or Israel might find room for a reset if Netanyahu loses his premiership later this year.
“There are cross currents and Jews can feel both ways at the same time,” Bloomfield said. “We ourselves can be concerned where people use antisemitism as cries as a way to get out of legitimate debate. On the other hand, there’s even more of us concerned that a lot of what is being debated by Israel often does veer too quickly into something that’s antisemitism. We can have both feelings at the same time.”
2026-08-14 05:55:00
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: The cracks are starting to show in President Donald Trump’s Iran campaign.
What’s happening? Conditions on a US warship deployed in the Middle East have grown so dire, multiple sailors have reportedly tried to go overboard (at least one did so but was rescued safely, according to CNN).
The attempts to jump overboard comes as family members of sailors are raising concerns with Democratic lawmakers about deteriorating mental health on the ship amid sanitation issues and shortages of food and basic supplies.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier has been deployed for more than 250 days, starting last November, including a stretch of more than 200 days at sea — a modern record. Its deployment was supposed to end months ago, in May, but has continued as Trump’s Iran war stretches on.
How is the administration responding? Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that reports about conditions on the Lincoln are “completely misrepresented.” Help is on the way for the Lincoln, though, with another US aircraft carrier en route to the area to replace it (according to the Wall Street Journal, the replacement was already planned, and not in response to deteriorating conditions on the Lincoln).
Why does this matter? Conditions on the Lincoln are not the only recent stumbling block for the US war with Iran. Earlier this month, we learned more about the US’s increasingly serious shortages of key offensive and defensive missiles, including THAAD and Patriot interceptors used to protect US troops and allies. On top of that, the Washington Post reported Thursday that the US has run through around a quarter of its Reaper drones, which cost tens of millions of dollars apiece.
It’s the latest example of how the math of the war is starting to slant against the US: Reaper drones and Patriot missiles are incredibly expensive, while Iran has figured out how to mass-produce attack drones on the cheap. And with no end in sight, shortages and situations like the Lincoln will only become a larger problem.
Here’s some good news from my colleague Adam Clark Estes: As wrecked as your attention span may feel, it’s not permanently degraded. He talked with attention experts to figure out how to repair his, and how we can all do the same. You can read his full story here with a gift link — and then, for all of our brains’ sake, let’s log off. We’ll see you back here tomorrow.
2026-08-14 04:15:00
Tom Tiffany, the new Republican nominee for governor in Wisconsin, is not just a passive supporter of President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election. He is an active promoter of them.
In December 2020, when he was a member of Congress, he signed on to a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory. On January 6, 2021, he voted against certifying the results in Pennsylvania and Texas just hours after rioters threatened to kill his colleagues. He has stated he would have overturned Wisconsin’s results too, and just this year endorsed an FBI investigation into the state’s elections. And though the national climate in 2026 favors Democrats, Wisconsin is a closely divided state: Tiffany could beat the odds and win the general.
There is, in short, a very real chance that someone who doesn’t believe American elections are legitimate may soon be supervising them in one of the 2028 presidential cycle’s most important swing states.
It’s not just Wisconsin. In each of the other most critical 2028 states — Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada — Republicans have chosen an election denier as their nominee for governor, secretary of state, or both. If any of these candidates win, they will have at least some degree of authority over the administration of elections in a state that could determine the outcome of the next presidential election.
So could the outcome of the 2026 midterms ultimately lead to a stolen election in 2028, as some are already warning? Election experts say it’s very unlikely.
State election laws contain numerous overlapping checks on interference from top officials. The judiciary has a pretty strong track record in stopping election malfeasance. A reform to the Electoral Count Act, passed quietly during the Biden presidency, significantly improved federal protections against election interference. And in 2028, the man uniquely responsible for previous pushes to invalidate the 2020 election won’t be on the ballot.
“[There are many] reasons why one should not be concerned,” said Rebecca Green, the co-director of the Election Law Program at the College of William and Mary. “Even in circumstances where there is a single partisan in control of a state’s election process, there are numerous checks on that power.”
That said, the risk isn’t zero. There is a remote chance, if the election is extremely close, that a well-placed election denier could swing the outcome. And even if they don’t outright steal an election, someone like Tiffany could still use their office to damage the electoral system in some pretty important ways.
“We have to be walking between complacency and alarmism,” said Rick Hasen, an expert on election law at UCLA. “Both of those are bad.”
Election law varies from state to state. Most of the time, the state’s secretary of state (SOS) is in charge of elections, but sometimes it’s the state board of elections. Sometimes the SOS is directly elected, and sometimes they’re appointed by the governor.
But in broad strokes, there are three ways for governors or an allied SOS to attack an election. They can try to suppress opposition voters before the voting starts, by (for example) purging them from the rolls or putting insufficient polling stations in their neighborhoods. They can try to interfere during the vote count, by trying to disqualify outparty ballots or even falsifying the vote count. Or they can try to interfere afterward, by refusing to certify election results.
“Courts have shown themselves to be pretty good against election denialism. That’s true of both Democratic and Republican appointed and elected judges.”
Rick Hasen, UCLA election expert
Each of those is exceptionally, perhaps even prohibitively, difficult to pull off — even for a committed election denier.
Voter suppression is hard because the tactics are legally limited. Current federal law bans voter roll purges within 90 days of the election, which allowed Democrats to simply re-register voters disqualified in previous Republican purges (though the Supreme Court may overturn this provision in an upcoming case). Impediments like polling station placement are, per Hasen, hard to target; they are most likely to affect low-income and low-propensity voters, who have trended Republican in recent elections.
Interfering with the counting of votes is made difficult by what Green terms “adversarial election administration”: basically, the fact that partisans from both parties are involved in multiple different stages of the counting process. Every state has strict rules governing the counting process, and observers from both parties can see if they’re being breached in the other party’s favor. If there is an irregularity, courts are empowered to step in and correct it.
And it is simply illegal for governors or secretaries of state to refuse to certify legitimate elections. State laws in all relevant battleground states allow courts to issue a writ of mandamus requiring officials to certify duly counted results, which they have done repeatedly since 2020 when Republican-controlled county election boards withheld certification.
“Courts have shown themselves to be pretty good against election denialism,” Hasen said. “That’s true of both Democratic and Republican appointed and elected judges.”
The 2022 reform to the Electoral Count Act added several additional safeguards for presidential elections specifically, including a requirement that Congress defer to court determinations on electoral legitimacy if a governor attempts to defy them.
And all of that assumes that a Republican who denied the result of the 2020 election would necessarily attempt to steal future elections. That may not be the case.
“Just because you have partisan control of an election, and just because that person has cast doubt on previous elections, doesn’t mean that person is not going to be committed to running a fair election,” Green said.
Such a sentiment may sound naive, but it also may reflect the reality of post-Trump politics. The president was the driving force behind the attempt to overturn the 2020 election; his insistence that he did not lose, and his iron grip on the hearts and minds of the GOP base, pushed the party onto grounds that its other leaders clearly feared to tread.
While Republicans certainly attempted to stack the electoral deck in their favor prior to Trump, these brazen attempts to overturn or steal legitimate elections are a product of his time in office. Whether he has permanently changed the Republican Party into an entity that will regularly reject elections they lose is very much an open question.
All of this should give us some comfort about the upcoming state-level races: It is simply very hard for a governor or SOS to steal a presidential election even if they want to. While American democracy is weak in many different ways, the security of its election architecture specifically is actually one of its strong points.
But even the most impregnable-seeming fortresses can be breached. And there are reasons to worry that, in an extreme case, an election denier in key positions could well damage the integrity of the 2028 presidential election.
In a 2022 paper, the law professor Lisa Marshall Manheim argued that conventional legal analysis has proven inadequate for addressing the threat of election subversion. While legal experts are correct to say that the law makes stealing an election hard, the most dangerous threat to US elections — Trump’s 2020 campaign — was essentially extra-legal in character.
While American democracy is weak in many different ways, the security of its election architecture specifically is actually one of its strong points.
While “superficially” operating through the legal system, Trump was actually asking officials from Congress on down to engage in obviously unlawful behavior. When Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to overturn the state’s results, or for Mike Pence to find the “courage” to nullify the results on January 6, he wasn’t asking these two men to act according to their legal duties. He was asking them to step beyond law, to embrace a reading of their office’s powers so obviously absurd that it amounts to declaring the text of the law to be no limit at all.
This is the nightmare scenario: one in which officials in key positions simply decide that they no longer have to follow a good-faith reading of the law. If enough officials in the right places decide to cast off legal shackles, no carefully crafted statute can stop them. We will, as Hasen put it, exit the domain of law into “something else”: the politics of raw power.
Anyone who endorsed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election — let alone actively attempted to act on them — has already shown a degree of contempt for election law. That means that one can’t rule out a similar display of contempt in the future, only this time with the power to turn that into impactful defiance of law.
It’s vastly too early to say the conditions under which such a radical breach might occur, in 2028 or in the future. A lot depends on the makeup of the Republican Party; whether leaders after Trump embrace or downplay his hostility to the electoral system itself. But we now know that the risk is there. And the more election deniers we have in key positions, the greater the odds are that the risk becomes real — even if the baseline probability remains low in absolute terms.
This connects to another, more insidious risk: that electing election deniers could exacerbate the ongoing crisis of electoral confidence since 2020.
Even if Tiffany or someone like him doesn’t try to outright prevent or nullify Democratic victories in their state, they could still declare that they lack confidence in the result’s integrity. That they tried to run a fair election, but that Democrats or the courts prevented them from doing so — and thus, despite their lack of legal powers to stop it, that they believe the election to have been compromised or even stolen.
This may not lead to a series of January 6s across the country. But even if it didn’t, it would deepen the lack of trust Republican voters have in the electoral system. If Republicans post-Trump continue to believe that Democrats are engaged in widespread cheating, that could contribute to an environment where the kind of extra-legal shenanigans Manheim warned of could look more tempting.
So while it is quite unlikely that the 2026 elections will lead to a crisis in 2028, it could play a role in dashing the possibility that American democracy moves on from the dangerous Trump-era fighting over elections. And as long as that fighting persists, another 2020-style crisis will remain a live possibility.
2026-08-14 03:00:00
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
Karoline Leavitt, the 28-year-old firebrand who became the nation’s youngest-ever press secretary in 2024, is stepping down to “spend more time with her beautiful young children.”
President Donald Trump announced the news on Wednesday night in a Truth Social post, adding that Leavitt would remain an adviser and “an influential voice within the Republican Party.”
It feels fitting that Leavitt — whose public persona required her to perform both her job and her role as a wife and mom — is stepping down to parent. In MAGA’s conception of womanhood, there can be no higher calling. Not even serving the president.
For more than two years, however, Leavitt made a show of trying to do both. She returned to work on Trump’s reelection campaign only days after the birth of her first child and regularly shared photos of herself working while holding her son.
Leavitt also welcomed a daughter over the spring, amid what Fox News dubbed a White House “baby boom.” Officials and conservative media quickly turned the new mothers into advertisements for the pro-natalist movement: Proof that women could, and should, have both careers and children.
Leavitt is still being held up that way, even — perhaps especially — as she departs. “She’s been a role model to millions and millions of young women,” deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told Fox News on Wednesday. “A mother, a family woman, a press secretary, a patriot.”
The MAGA movement tends to glorify traditional female roles — wife, mother, homemaker — while simultaneously (and confusingly) elevating ambitious, career-driven women like Leavitt.
At first glance, her prominence — and that of other women in Trump’s administration — would seem to rebut the charge that the movement is misogynist. In fact, that’s a line of defense that Trump himself has advanced.
But look a little closer, and you’ll see the structural contradiction at the heart of MAGA femininity: Female power is only legitimate when it’s exercised on behalf of Trump, and by women who conform to traditional expectations around gender, marriage, motherhood, and physical appearance.
To Trump, a female White House correspondent was a “piggy,” for instance. But a female press secretary who defended the slur was “knocking them dead.”
A female employee at a Trump golf course was asked to sign an NDA after reporting harassment. But the female attorney who allegedly pressured her to sign it was, according to Trump, “a rocket ship.”
A female politician rose to prominence championing the president’s deportation agenda. But to get there, she had to find her “Mar-a-Lago face” — and she was ousted after showing signs of personal ambition. (In fairness, she was also very bad at her job.)
It’s a very tricky little tightrope to walk. And lately, that strain has begun to show. While Trump began his second term with an unusually high number of female Cabinet members for a Republican president, women now hold only four of 23 Cabinet or Cabinet-level positions.
Trump’s support is also down among young women. In Congress, a bloc of prominent conservative female lawmakers recently broke from their party to censure Republicans accused of misconduct. Now, the MAGA movement is losing one of its fiercest female proxies in Leavitt.
Even at the height of her powers, however, Leavitt never really got her due. The luxurious office traditionally reserved for the White House press secretary instead went to another White House staffer. A dude.
➨ Meet the latest and greatest exercise cult. It’s called HYROX — yes, in all caps — and it’s an eight-round agility and strength competition. Participants spend thousands of dollars on training, registration, and travel for these events, which tend to “subsume your entire existence.” That’s a very hard no for me, personally…but a lot of very fit and competitive people are apparently into it.