Why Trump can’t just decree changes to voting by mail – a former federal judge explains how the president’s executive order is ‘a solution looking for a problem’

John Jones knows about voter suppression. Currently the president of Dickinson College, Jones – nominated in 2002 by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate – served for almost two decades as a federal court judge. In that role, Jones presided over a case, filed just prior to the November 2020 presidential election, in which a conservative legal foundation sued Pennsylvania’s top election official, alleging that she had allowed 21,000 dead people to remain on the voter rolls. The group asked Jones to stop those people from voting.

Jones denied the request. “In an election where every vote matters, we will not disenfranchise potentially eligible voters based solely upon the allegations of a private foundation,” he wrote in his memorandum on the case. In this interview with The Conversation politics and legal affairs editor Naomi Schalit, Jones discusses President Donald Trump’s March 31, 2026, executive order to wrest control of mail-in voting from states and give it to the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security; how the constitutional design of U.S. voting bars such federal control; and how Trump’s order would disenfranchise voters and is now the subject of lawsuits by voting rights groups and 23 states.

Article 1, Section 4, of the Constitution says, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” When you saw the executive order by the president, what did you think?

My first thought was, this executive order is dead on arrival. It assumes two problems that really don’t exist...

Peter Thiel Flees to Argentina

Last year, tech fascist guru Curtis Yarvin warned that Trump’s Silicon Valley supporters should prepare to flee the United States in case Democrats retake power. Now, one of Yarvin’s key followers—Palantir co-founder and Antichrist enthusiast Peter Thiel—appears to be heeding his advice.

Thiel has purchased a new mansion in an affluent section of Buenos Aires, according to the New York Post. The billionaire plans an extended stay in Argentina, according to the Buenos Aires Herald, and he met with Argentine President Javier Milei this week...

...Thiel believes that the United States—and most nation-states—will experience a dramatic collapse in the 21st century as technological advances create widespread economic and political chaos. His beliefs were largely inspired by The Sovereign Individual: How To Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State, a 1997 book which predicted that crypto and AI would collapse the existing world order. It advised savvy investors—a new class of so-called “cognitive elites”—to prepare for this reality by acquiring extra passports and exiting the USA for remote parts of the world...

...The Sovereign Individual predicted a violent backlash against socially destructive technologies, which may explain why Thiel and his friends are so obsessed with doomsday preparations. In 2016, Altman told the New Yorker he was stockpiling guns, gold and gas masks in Big Sur, and also had plans to flee with Thiel to New Zealand.

If history is any indicator, Thiel will not find happiness in Argentina and will continue touring the globe to preach his own personal brand of apocalypse. But his decision to publicly decamp to Latin America at the height of his power suggests that he, like Yarvin, lacks confidence in the Trump regime.