Tuesday brought chilling news, as an anonymous U.S. Postal Service official alleged that the agency is aiding the Trump administration's stepped-up attacks ahead of this November's make-or-break elections — elections the columnist argues could determine whether the 250-year-old country falls under authoritarian rule. The allegations center on a new USPS computer system reportedly being rushed into place ahead of the midterms, a replay of concerns that surfaced in 2020, when the agency's sudden operational changes under a Trump-aligned postmaster general drew lawsuits and congressional scrutiny before being rolled back.

In an opinion piece for Alternet, veteran journalist D. Earl Stephens contends that this latest breaking news bolsters what he calls the most significant and horrific timeline in the United States since the Civil War. In his view, there can be no more dire occurrence than a president using his enormous power against the people he is supposed to serve by battering the bedrock of democracy: the sanctity of the vote.

Stephens writes that by assaulting mail-in voting, Donald Trump is making it clearer than he has since January 6, 2021 — when he called for an attack on America ahead of the certification of the 2020 vote he lost — that he intends to see to it the people of this country have no say in how they are governed going forward. The stakes are practical as well as symbolic: by the AP's account, roughly one-third of all voters rely on mail ballots, meaning disruptions to Postal Service systems could affect tens of millions of ballots this fall.

Given what he describes as irrefutable facts, Stephens examines how three of the nation's leading newspapers and print services handled the news Tuesday, presenting the lede paragraphs from their reporting on Trump's actions affecting November's vote. He also reminds readers, arguing this context is rarely included, that Trump is a convicted felon who has lied tens of thousands of times to the American people:

• Associated Press: The U.S. Postal Service is poised to launch a hastily built, error-riddled computer system that could jeopardize the process of mail voting relied upon by one-third of all voters, according to a whistleblower statement released Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

• The New York Times: A U.S. Postal Service official has alleged that the agency is moving forward with a "secretive, rushed" effort to carry out President Trump's order exerting federal control over mail voting, despite a court order blocking those plans.

• The Washington Post: An anonymous federal official warned in a disclosure to Congress that a rushed and insufficiently tested U.S. Postal Service system could prevent large numbers of Americans from receiving mail ballots this fall if courts approve President Donald Trump's plans for the midterm elections.

Stephens asks readers to take another look at his own lede and judge objectively which of the four offerings most accurately reflects the gravity of the moment. He renders all three news services' versions accurate but "completely inadequate" in addressing the situation, arguing that all three journalistic institutions "failed miserably" to alert their readership of the danger Americans face and the stakes of Trump's actions.

He notes how similar the outlets' ledes are, and while he stops short of alleging they are working in unison to minimize the story, he argues there is a "malaise and incompetence" across almost the entirety of the corporate media that is crushing it under its own dead weight. His critique lands amid a broader, ongoing debate over how newsrooms frame threats to democratic institutions — a debate that intensified after several major outlets made leadership and editorial changes that drew criticism over their coverage of Trump.

(He adds that he understands "crooked ownership" at many of these organizations is to blame. CBS News, he writes, is "completely dead" as a trusted journalistic outpost, "which is almost too sad to type." Jeff Bezos' Washington Post, he acknowledges, is still occasionally capable of important work, but has been undermined by grievous editorial decisions that have badly damaged its credibility.)

In the column, Stephens argues the attack on the vote is well into its 11th year, which he says eliminates any shadow of a doubt that it has been a planned and coordinated assault from the start. Even before his improbable 2016 win, Trump let it be known that if he were to lose he wouldn't concede and would contend the vote was "fixed" against him, as the BBC reported at the time.

Even after winning that election but losing the popular tally by almost three million votes, Trump assembled a costly commission chartered to search out voter fraud that would prove he had actually won a majority. The commission found nothing, saying, "There's no real evidence of it anywhere." Since coming on the scene, Stephens writes, Trump has done everything in his power to diminish people's greatest power in a democracy: their vote.

Stephens expresses disbelief at how, in his view, the national media is failing the country in this moment. "We are smack in the middle of a national emergency right now," he writes, "and these incompetent, dangerous fools continue to treat it all as if one of the two major parties setting fire to our national elections is some normal part of the political game." It is not, he argues. Here is what it is, in his words: "AN ATTACK ON AMERICA."

He writes that he would like to hear more from the opposition party, on an hourly basis, framing these actions as anti-American, arguing that nothing is more anti-American than attacking a citizen's right to vote. If Trump, with the support of what Stephens calls his "bought-off radical right Supreme Court and repugnant subservient party," is allowed to get away with this, "WE ARE DONE. OVER." Trump, he predicts, will be a convicted felon, serial liar, and "America's first king," and not even the press will be able to normalize that, "because he will be busy rounding them up, and jailing them."

"We have never been here before," Stephens writes. "We have never had a president openly attacking our vote and our country. This alone makes it gigantic news by definition."

For good measure, Stephens says he checked the 24/7 TV news channels he generally can't stand. While MSNBC and CNN carried some reporting on the latest developments, neither gave the story the heft he believes it deserves. Fox News, by his account, was ignoring it and still going on about Joe Biden. "No, I'm not kidding," he writes. He asks why the onscreen chyrons elsewhere aren't screaming: "REPUBLICAN ATTACK ON AMERICA."

He watched PBS with his dinner and found its treatment predictably even-keeled — because, he suggests, why get too upset at the possibility of being yanked off the air for good in three months? He asks why outlets are not reporting the consequences the country would face if Trump outright kills the vote, as he has shown in action and words he intends to do. The PBS NewsHour aired a segment on the whistleblower's warning, and NPR has reported on Trump's mail-in voting push at the Postal Service.

Stephens lists what he describes as the current landscape: Republicans employing the Postal Service against citizens, reckless gerrymandering, tampering with voter rolls, closing voting locations, threatening to place military members at polling places, attacking poll workers, and doing everything possible to diminish the credibility of the vote. "They are enemies of America, plain and simple," he writes, "and for the life of me I don't understand why it is so hard to report that." What happens next, on both the court battles over Trump's mail-voting order and how USPS proceeds with the disputed system, is likely to shape how millions of ballots are cast and counted in November.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of "Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump's Very Important Letters" and finished a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

Source: Alternet