Shh. Don't Read This.

The following headline appeared on the home page of The Washington Post at 6 a.m. today. It’s still there:

Trump is trying to change how midterm elections are conducted

Many of the president’s endeavors go far beyind typical political persuasion challenging long-established democratic norms.

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Would you be impelled to read that story?

Neither would I. Sounds boring. Incrementally bureaucratic. Endeavors? Norms?

That’s the idea. The bosses of The Post — not the writers or front-line editors, but the people who direct the coverage and how it is presented — don’t really want you to want to read that story. Know why? You’ll find out right now when you read it. Here’s the top of it.

By Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

Five years ago, President Donald Trump pressured Republican county election officials, state lawmakers and members of Congress to find him votes after he lost his reelection bid. Now, he’s seeking to change the rules before ballots are cast.

Trump, openly fearful that a Congress controlled by Democrats could investigate him, impeach him and stymie his agenda, is using every tool he can find to try to influence the 2026 midterm elections and, if his party loses, sow doubt in their validity. Many of these endeavors go far beyond typical political persuasion, challenging long-established democratic norms.

They include unprecedented demands that Republican state lawmakers redraw congressional districts before the constitutionally required 10-year schedule, the prosecution of political opponents, a push to toughen voter registration rules and attempts to end the use of voting machines and mail ballots.

The administration has gutted the role of the nation’s cybersecurity agency in protecting elections; stocked the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and FBI from top to bottom with officials who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election; given a White House audience to people who, like the president, promote the lie that he won the 2020 election; sued over state and local election policies that Trump opposes; and called for a new census that excludes noncitizens. The wide-ranging efforts seek to expand on some of the strategies he and his advisers and allies used to try to reverse the 2020 results that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

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How’s that for “challenging long-established democratic norms?”

This is what the Trump-beholden Lords of the Mainstream Media are trying to do. Make you somnolent. They’re doing it as best they can with staffs that don’t want to let them do it. It’s an interesting scuffle.

Remember the headline in the New York Times the other day, right after ICE goons murdered a woman in Minneapolis? I’m repeating it here from a previous Gene Pool, for your continued backwash revulsion:

Trump Sits Down With Times Reporters for Two-Hour Interview

In a wide-ranging conversation with four Times reporters, President Trump talked about the Minneapolis ICE shooting, immigration, Venezuela and even his plans for further White House renovations.

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That was the story in which Trump told obvious lie after obvious lie about what had happened on the streets of Minneapolis — lies he has yet to temper or retract. It was an interview the Times reporters ultimately lost control of, allowing the president to meander into whatever diversionary subjects he chose.

A little-noticed sidebar to that interview reported the following, which I will summarize:

Trump said that he had considered sending in the National Guard in 2020 to seize control of voting machines to find evidence that they had been hacked to rig the election against him — but that he decided against it. Trump now says that was a mistake.

“Well, I should have,” he told the Times.

At the time, he was persuaded not to by several marginally professional members of his inner circle, including Pat Cipollone, his beleaguered, usually highly bendable White House counsel. Eventually, the idea was flatly squashed by Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, which finally was just a step too far, even for the the guy who, for Trump, had ignored Congressional subpoenas and whitewashed the Mueller report.

Does it at all stretch credulity to suspect that Trump is planning just such a seizure for the midterms? Does anyone think Pam Bondi, his uber-enthusiastic tool, will turn him down?

Read past the headlines, folks.

Read the stories.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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