Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to stay a lower court injunction that had barred the federal government from taking action on Trump’s second executive order from March 2026 (“Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections”).

The internet freaked out, as it is prone to do, both in despair and jubilation (e.g., “Supreme Court upholds Trump EO allowing USPS to withhold ballot sends in states that don’t verify voter rolls,” Jack Posobiec, X post).

But the reality is much more mundane. As stated in the first three sentences of Justice Sotomayor’s dissent:

Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful. Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives. Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges. 

As quarterback Aaron Rodgers once told Green Bay Packers fans: “R‑E-L-A‑X.”

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Congress is vastly overspending, and federal debt is rising by $2 trillion a year. Without major spending reforms, the government is headed toward a financial crisis. But it is also true that even if the federal budget were balanced, many spending programs would continue undermining the economy because their costs outweigh their benefits. 

Such negative-value spending is the focus of my recent “Leaky Bucket” study with Ryan Bourne. We argue that the federal budget is riddled with wasteful “leaks.” The government scoops up trillions of dollars into its budget bucket, but many of them spill out due to inefficiencies and policy mistakes. The Trump administration has focused on reducing fraud, but that is only one type of leak from the federal budget bucket.

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My colleague Stephen Richer has already weighed in with observations on the New Jersey voter registration fiasco, in which a software error mistakenly registered roughly 6,600 persons to vote between June 12, 2023, and June 25, 2024, even though they had affirmed they were not US citizens. Of these, somewhat fewer than 400 later voted. 

So far as I am aware, this is by far the biggest instance of unlawful noncitizen voting in the US unearthed in the past generation, so it may matter that it seems to be widely agreed that the mistaken registration did not result from intentional misconduct by the persons added to the rolls, the state, or its software vendor. Damningly, however, when the error was found and the software fixed, the state “never notified affected residents or removed their names from the rolls,” according to the NYT account. Incoming Gov. Mikie Sherrill at a press conference called this “unacceptable.” That’s for sure. 

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$37.5 billion. A huge sum of money for most people, but pocket change for the Pentagon. This is the amount that Secretary Hegseth, as he pleaded with the Senate to pass a $60 billion defense supplemental and a $1.15 trillion Pentagon budget, claimed that the Department of Defense has spent in its war with Iran. Hegseth defended these requests by stating, “This is a new request based on new realities of a world we face, stepping up to meet that moment.”

Yet, Hegseth’s $37.5 billion price tag obscures reality. None of Hegseth’s remarks checks out.

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The Government Accountability Office (GAO)—Congress’s investigative watchdog—usually gets at least grudging cooperation from executive branch departments and agencies when conducting its audits. Yesterday, GAO released a terse two-page “review” of the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) proposed reductions in force (RIF) and reorganization plans and activities that revealed how OPM reacted to GAO’s inquiries:

To supplement GAO’s analysis of publicly available data, GAO requested documentation from OPM regarding changes made to offices or programs since 2025, the rationale behind the closure or consolidation of offices, and processes for strategic workforce planning, among other information. Other than comments on a preliminary draft of this report, OPM did not provide any requested documents or information, nor did it agree to meet with GAO or respond to written questions. As a result, in this report, GAO is unable to provide complete information on what changes OPM made, its rationale, the expected costs and benefits, and any effect on OPM’s ability to fulfil its mission. 

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Last night during his national address, President Trump claimed that key documents he ordered declassified demonstrate that the US Intelligence Community (IC) withheld or otherwise soft-pedaled evidence of foreign election interference or voting machine vulnerabilities. The documents at issue—released in a process that can be charitably described as irregular at best—tell a different story.

One very recent CIA document (dated June 29, 2026) had this to say about allegations of Venezuelan government efforts to manipulate electronic voting systems:

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