Michael Barbaro: From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. On Tuesday, President Trump asked the Supreme Court to bless his audacious plan to restrict voting by mail just weeks before a high-stakes midterm election. Today, my colleague, Nick Corasaniti, takes us inside Trump's plan, the legal battle that it's touched off, and the uncertainty that it's created for both local election officials and voters across the country. It's Wednesday, September 9th. Nick, thank you for making time for us.

Nick Corasaniti: Thanks for having me.

Michael Barbaro: My pleasure. So, looking at the calendar, we are, I believe, just days away in a few states from the official beginning of early voting in this year's midterm elections. And I think, rightfully, a lot of our listeners are confused about the state of mail-in ballots, which have become a huge way that a lot of the country votes because of the actions that have been taken by the president and how much they've become tied up in the courts. So, can you just explain the situation that we are in at a very high level?

Nick Corasaniti: Absolutely. And one thing, really quick, is that early voting, in a way, has already begun. On Friday, North Carolina and Delaware started sending out mail ballots. So, there are ballots that are on their way to voters, as we speak.

Michael Barbaro: They're in the system.

Nick Corasaniti: They're in the system. They're either being processed by the Postal Service, or maybe they already arrived. But, where we are in this moment is not to repeatedly use the phrase unprecedented but something that we've never seen before, which is the president and the executive branch seeking to leverage an agency, in this case the United States Postal Service, to change how elections are run. And this stems from an executive order that the president signed earlier this year seeking to restrict mail voting. And basically turning the Postal Service into an arbiter of which states can have mail voting.

Michael Barbaro: Turning the Postal Service, which we normally think of as just carrying the ballots, into a kind of political arbiter of which ballots are allowed to go through and which are not.

Nick Corasaniti: Exactly. The core premise of the executive order claims that certain states' mail voting procedures lack sufficient election security safeguards, and thus instructs the Postal Service not to process or deliver ballots that fail to meet specific stringent criteria. This directive immediately triggered a massive legal backlash from state attorneys general, voting rights groups, and local election administrators, who argue that the president is overstepping executive authority and encroaching upon states' constitutional authority to determine the times, places, and manner of holding elections.

Michael Barbaro: How has this played out in the courts? Where does the legal tug-of-war currently stand?

Nick Corasaniti: Federal district courts previously issued preliminary injunctions blocking the implementation of the executive order, finding that it likely violates the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act. However, the Department of Justice rapidly appealed, and after the circuit court declined to lift the stay, they filed an emergency application directly with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to intervene, freeze the lower court rulings, and allow the executive order to take effect for the upcoming election. That is why, on Tuesday, this entire fight arrived at the doorstep of the nine Supreme Court justices.

Michael Barbaro: For the local election officials on the ground preparing for the election, what kind of practical difficulties does this last-minute legal uncertainty create?

Nick Corasaniti: So, they're trying to talk to voters and meet them where they are on their concerns, while also educating them of exactly where the election process is and what these voters can do. And what's happening, I think, behind the scenes a lot with these local election officials is a lot of contingency planning. They're starting to think, okay, what if we do need to increase drop boxes? What if we need to change our office hours? What if we need to create pop-up voting centers, other places that people could cast an in-person ballot? Just to deal with the potential, although unlikely, eventuality that this executive order becomes law, but also just to deal with how voters are feeling right now.

Michael Barbaro: Mhm. For the most part, do most places have sufficient drop boxes to handle a large sudden infusion of ballots into that system if people have in any way lost faith in the mail system?

Nick Corasaniti: Some states certainly do, but other states have restricted drop boxes. So, they might not be able to meet an increased demand. There is pretty universal confusion, if not doubt, in the mail voting process from voters that I've talked to. And you could just look at my inbox. Whenever I write a story, I hear from readers either agreeing or disagreeing often with the politics discussed. But over the past few weeks, that's changed. Voters are simply telling me where they live and asking if they'll be able to vote by mail. That's the degree of confusion that has set in right now.

Michael Barbaro: They're just like, I have no idea what's going on. So, so Nick, you tell me whether the mail-in system is going to be working for me.

Nick Corasaniti: Exactly. It's just here's my location. I've read these stories. I don't exactly follow what's going on. And that confusion is happening in voters who are new to mail in ballots, as well as those who have voted by mail for their entire lives.

Michael Barbaro: I am curious what you say in response to these folks who email you. I mean, it's not your job to tell people what to do with their mail in ballots, but in so far as you do have the time to respond, what do you say?

Nick Corasaniti: I mean, what I can tell them is that the law says you can vote by mail right now. And so there is nothing legally preventing anyone who's emailed me, as long as they're an eligible voter, from casting a mail ballot. But they still are going to have to pay attention to the news and to see if anything changes.

Michael Barbaro: Nick, it's hard ultimately not to conclude that this executive order and what the president has done so far is one of those heads Trump wins, tails Trump wins kind of scenarios, by which I mean no matter how this ends up legally, no matter what the Supreme Court's ultimate ruling is, the president has created a huge amount of anxiety and uncertainty about a major way that we vote in this country so, so startlingly close to the election itself.

Nick Corasaniti: Exactly. If the goal, or one of the goals, of this executive order was to limit mail voting, it's pretty clear that they're going to succeed, no matter how the Supreme Court rules, because there are enough voters who are concerned by the legal back and forth, by what they've learned from whistleblowers, about the mail voting process. And it fits into a larger effort that President Trump has embarked on for years now. When elections don't go the president's way, he challenged whether elections could be certified. They came up with this idea of alternate or fake electors to the Electoral College. Right. There was the riot at the Capitol in January 6th over his vice president certifying the election. Any of the nominees of the Trump administration have to stick to this fairly convoluted script of not saying Joe Biden won the 2020 election. They can only say that he was certified as president. And so there's a history, there's a bedrock of doubting elections. There are years of evidence of audacious schemes, of rhetoric designed to crack trust in the very democratic institutions that have upheld this country for 250 years. And this executive order that is before the Supreme Court affecting mail voting is just the latest and possibly successful attempt at further eroding trust in our electoral process.

Michael Barbaro: Well, Nick, thank you very much.

Nick Corasaniti: Thanks for having me.

Michael Barbaro: You can read more from reporters like Nick Corasaniti on the New York Times app. If you don't already have the app, we wanted to let you know that if you download it right now, you'll get access to all of our journalism free for 1 month. So, give it a try. We'll be right back.

Michael Barbaro: Here's what else you need to know today.

Ed Miliband: Now, for a long time, the British government has rightly said settlements are illegal, but we have remained silent on the question of the legality of the occupation as a whole. Today I announce that the official view of the British government is that the occupation is unlawful. The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank perpetrated by settler terrorists. And all too often, the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and what...

Megan Liberman: On Tuesday, the governments of Canada, France, and the United Kingdom announced sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. A coordinated rebuke that reflects Israel's deepening isolation on the world stage. In a speech before parliament, British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband denounced the behavior of West Bank settlers who have violently attacked Palestinians over and over again, at times with impunity. Israel's government reacted to the sanctions with fury, saying that it would shut down the consulate that represents the British government in Jerusalem, Gaza, and the occupied West Bank. And two conflicting court orders on Tuesday have thrown congressional races in Missouri into chaos. First, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected a request from Missouri officials to use a congressional map that was redrawn to benefit Republicans. Soon after, a district court judge in Missouri turned around and voted the other way, ordering the state to rely on that redrawn map. Taken together, the two orders leave Missouri with no agreement about which map to use in November and no immediate way to resolve the confusion. Today's episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Ricky Newby, and Lexi Diao. It was edited by Devon Taylor. Contains music by Alisha Etoop, Dan Powell, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Megan Liberman. See you tomorrow.