The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to hand President Donald Trump a defeat in a closely watched case that could decide the future of mail-in voting, including not only whether states can count ballots after Election Day, but also before — putting at risk early and absentee voting.

The Trump Department of Justice and the Republican National Committee argued before the high court that Mississippi should not be able to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days later,” Politico reported.

The conservative attorneys insisted that they were not trying to eliminate early voting.

“We agree with both sides that early voting is still acceptable,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer told the court. “There could be a process where ballots are being received earlier, but that ballot box has to close on Election Day.”

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Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to suggest that Sauer’s deadline was arbitrary.

“I’m not sure I understand how that point is responsive to the point that if the Election Day is the voting and taking that it has to be that day,” Roberts said. “Maybe you’re not saying anything other than, well, that’s different.”

“It’s a challenging question,” Sauer acknowledged.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito appeared most concerned with the concept of counting ballots before and after Election Day, giving “the most voice to concerns President Donald Trump has repeatedly aired and amplified about public suspicion driven by vote tallies potentially being swayed by late-arriving ballots,” Politico noted.

“We are moving in this direction: We don’t have Election Day any more,” Alito said. “We have election month or we have election months, early voting can start a month before the election. The ballot can be received a month after the election.”

Citing amicus briefs, Alito expressed concern, saying that “confidence in election outcomes can be seriously undermined if the apparent outcome of the election on the day after the polls close is radically flipped by the acceptance later of a big stash of ballots that flip the election.”

Politico’s Josh Gerstein commented that the Supreme Court seems “likely to deliver a defeat to Trump and rule states can count ballots received after Election Day, with Roberts, Barrett and maybe Kavanaugh joining the liberals.”

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The American aviation system seems to be “near collapse,” amid fatal crashes, crumbling airports, stressed-out air traffic controllers — and the latest sign: hours-long TSA security lines, according to a report in The Atlantic.

The most recent fatal airline crash came Sunday evening when an Air Canada Express jet collided with a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Two pilots were killed and dozens of passengers were injured. The airport has been closed since, though it is expected to reopen Monday afternoon.

“A closure at LaGuardia puts pressure on other airports in the area, and they might not be prepared to handle any redirects,” The Atlantic noted. “This morning, reports of smoke in the air-traffic-control tower at Newark Liberty International Airport, just across the Hudson River from New York City, caused a brief ground stop. Officials determined the problem was a burning smell in an elevator and reopened the tower, but this is only the latest sign of how broken Newark airport is.”

There are other examples of a system in crisis.

“Last week, an Alaska Airlines plane nearly crashed into a FedEx plane on a runway at Newark, missing by just 300 to 325 feet, after pilots were instructed to avoid a collision. And earlier this month, a Singapore Airlines plane clipped the wing of a Spirit Airlines jet while pushing back from a gate. Last spring, air-traffic controllers lost the ability to track planes at Newark for two brief intervals, causing such stress that some of them took leave.”

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Describing a system that is “quietly eroding from within,” The Atlantic’s David A. Graham blames “years of disinvestment capped by political dysfunction.”

Graham also pointed to the FAA’s abrupt closure of the El Paso, Texas airport recently amid a standoff with the Department of Defense. And last January’s collision of an Army helicopter with an American Airlines jet — which President Trump quickly blamed on “DEI.”

Trump has now deployed ICE agents to at least a dozen airports across the country, purportedly to assist TSA agents, who have not been paid since Valentine’s Day as a partial government shutdown lingers and Trump refuses a bipartisan plan to quickly fund all DHS agencies except ICE.

Agents’ numbers are dwindling as call-outs increase over the weeks-long crisis.

Graham calls Trump deploying ICE agents to airports “a particularly extreme example of what the political scientist Steven M. Teles has dubbed ‘kludgeocracy,’ in which the government reaches for short-term, improvised solutions while resisting real reform.”

Should his deployment of ICE agents not work, the president has another solution: if ICE is not sufficient at the airports, he says he will “bring in the National Guard.”

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President Donald Trump, who has refused to order his ICE agents to stop wearing masks on America’s streets, is asking them to not wear masks while being deployed at America’s airports, amid a TSA crisis critics are now blaming him for. But the president is now threatening that if ICE is not sufficient at the airports, he will “bring in the National Guard.”

Saying he is a “big proponent” of ICE wearing masks while doing their work, he said, dealing with “hardened criminals,” Trump said he would “greatly appreciate” no masks at the airports.

Some noted that the masks supposedly are to prevent ICE agents from being doxxed — having their photos taken and their identities revealed. This move would effectively allow them to be photographed.

“Trump appears sensitive to the optics of masked ICE agents in airports,” wrote Politico senior legal affairs correspondent Kyle Cheney. “This is notable as a legal matter because DHS has argued in court (though judges are skeptical) that the mask policy is optional for each agent to decide based on personal/local safety concern.”

Trump also said that ICE “loves” that they will be able to arrest undocumented immigrants at the airports.

Some critics noted that Trump’s statement was a request, not an order.

Journalist Sophia A. Nelson called the no masks move “Progress.”

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