Trump's election gambit has no chance in court — even with a 'thumb on the scale': expert

President Donald Trump has a potential new scheme to implement his desired voter suppression and intimidation tactics against his political critics — but it's the same old playbook federal courts already threw out when he implemented his tariffs, Hofstra University law professor James Sample told MS NOW's Katy Tur, and it's even more tenuous now than it was then.

"There was an interview on CNN with Peter Tickton, who Donald Trump calls his childhood friend," said Tur. And Tickton, in that interview, said "he wants him to push an executive order to effectively seize federal control of the upcoming midterms by declaring a national emergency based on alleged foreign interference through electronic voting machines."

"Can he do that, James?" Tur asked.

Sample's answer was a resounding "no."

"Let me be clear there," said Sample. "There are emergency powers that are granted in statutes, the two primary statutes that grant the president emergency power, the National Emergencies Act and IEEPA."

The first law, he said, "does not mention elections as one of the powers" granted the president by Congress in emergencies, while IEEPA "is the statute that was at issue in the tariff case, where it didn't mention tariffs or taxes, and the Supreme Court struck it down." And that law, too, doesn't once mention elections, said Sample.

The bottom line, he said, is that "there's no way for him to claim an emergency legally," and his only strategy is to hope he can "outrun the courts" and put his thumb on the scale of elections before judges say he can't.

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A woman who has frequently trolled Vice President JD Vance using a satirical cat lady Instagram account filed a lawsuit against him after he blocked her from attending a public event, The Daily Beast reported Tuesday.

Political influencer Amanda McGonigle, 37, said that the Secret Service blocked her from a taxpayer-funded "official work visit" in May in Bangor, Maine.

Five agents apparently approached her and said, "We know where you stand," The Beast reported. After the incident, she decided to sue the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service for violating her First Amendment rights.

In 2024, McGonigle launched the CatsonaCouch Instagram account with a specific goal: “to troll the current administration and have more followers than JD Vance.”

"The username was inspired by Vance’s 2021 comment deriding 'childless cat ladies' in the Democratic Party, which he described in his new book as 'one of the dumbest things' he has ever said," according to The Beast.

"The entire point of this Instagram account is to troll JD Vance every single day because he is the human equivalent of a soggy saltine cracker," McGonigle said in an Instagram video.

"Apparently, my daily roasting of JD Vance has hurt his feelings so badly that I've now made it onto some sort of government watch list," she said.

McGonigle described how she registered for the event and received email confirmation on White House letterhead that she was slated to attend.

Her attorney, Anahita Sotoohi with the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Beast that McGonigle's "case strikes at the heart of the First Amendment, which protects the freedom to express political views without fear of retribution—even when done with flair and levity."

"The freedom to mock has been a central tenet of American political discourse since the founding," Sotoohi said. "The First Amendment cannot be revoked just because one of the country’s most powerful people can’t take a joke."

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Vice President JD Vance's new book, "Communion" (2026), received a scathing review from Rolling Stone journalist Stephen Rodrick, who argued the memoir is fundamentally misrepresented.

“Vance wants you to believe that Communion is about one man finding God. It’s not,” Rodrick wrote.

“It’s about what happens when religious conviction collides with a cult of personality. Vance argues that God must come first. Vance’s political career suggests he doesn’t believe his own faith.”

He criticized the apparent contradiction between Vance's stated faith priorities and his political career, noting that while Vance argues God must come first, his actions suggest otherwise.

Rodrick highlighted the irony of Vance's transformation over a decade: from the sympathetic figure in "Hillbilly Elegy" (2016) to what he describes as a "Trump-conjoined demagogue."

The critic also pointed out Vance's shift from criticizing Trump as a candidate 10 years ago to embodying traits he once condemned, including spreading false claims about Haitian immigrants and dismissing concerns about Ukraine and childless Americans.

“Vance’s spiritual journey is now complete,” Rodrick argued, “God may be in his heart, but Donald Trump sits on the throne.”

Watch the video below.

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Legal experts warned that a recent ruling from the Supreme Court is a trap for future presidents disliked by Chief Justice John Roberts.

During an episode of Slate's Amicus podcast, the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which lets Trump fire the heads of independent federal agencies, was flagged as a one-sided gift that will snap shut the moment a Democrat returns to the White House.

Sam Bagenstos, a University of Michigan law professor, predicted on the podcast that the Supreme Court would uphold a future Democratic president firing Trump appointees and cite Slaughter to do it. But the catch will be that when those new appointees try to act, the court "would also find other ways to rein in that Democratic president's power."

Bagenstos specifically sounded the alarm on the major-questions doctrine, which lets justices strike down policies even though statutory text supported them. Bagenstos noted that during the Biden administration, the Roberts court used that doctrine to "stop Biden from using statutes according to their text to achieve relatively progressive outcomes when the court didn't like those outcomes."

He added, "There are all sorts of other ways in which an activist Republican court can rein in an activist progressive president that don't require using this particular tool," referring to the major-questions doctrine, which Bagenstos called a "very powerful tool" for the Roberts court.

"It's great for the next Democratic president that they'll be able to fire the Trump appointees in the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board and whatever," Bagenstos said, listing independent federal agencies. "But then, when their new appointees try to actually get something done, what they're going to find out is that the courts are standing in their way."

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