A court case involving President Donald Trump’s efforts to sabotage voting by mail reached the Supreme Court on Monday. The executive order at the heart of Trump v. California is one of many attempts by Trump and his Republican Party to make it harder for voters to mail their ballots and to potentially invalidate lawfully cast ballots that are submitted by mail. 

The executive order is particularly significant, because, with it, Trump is claiming the unilateral authority to change US election policy in ways that, at least according to the Constitution, can only be done by Congress or by state governments. Trump and many of his Republican allies have previously urged other institutions, such as Congress or the Supreme Court, to shift US election rules to benefit the GOP. But now, he’s claiming the power to rewrite those rules himself.

The March executive order at issue in California claims to be an effort to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections. But several provisions of the order seem designed to intimidate state and local election officials by threatening them with illegal prosecutions. Another provision would forbid the US Postal Service (USPS) from delivering many mailed ballots, which would have political benefits for Trump. 

Democrats have been more likely to vote by mail than Republicans since at least the Covid-era 2020 election, and this trend has continued post pandemic. So, any election policy that suppresses mailed ballots will harm Democrats and help Republicans.

In late June, a federal district court determined that several provisions of Trump’s executive order exceed his authority and must be struck down. 

The issue before the Supreme Court in California, however, does not concern whether the executive order is legal or not. Instead, Trump’s lawyers claim that the district court acted prematurely by invalidating the executive order before it was fully implemented and before several federal agencies have an opportunity to flesh out how its provisions will actually work. Those lawyers, in other words, want to buy time for federal agencies to implement parts of the order before it can be challenged in court.

This is actually a plausible argument, as Trump’s brief to the justices makes several significant concessions that, if embraced by the justices, would significantly weaken Trump’s order at least for the time being. As Trump’s lawyers now characterize his order, it doesn’t do much of anything until several federal agencies take additional steps.

Still, the stakes in this case, which arises on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the justices often decide very quickly, are quite high. Even if the justices do hold Trump to the promises his lawyers made in their brief and issue an opinion explicitly stating that the order currently imposes no obligations on anyone, that will still set up a future reckoning on whether Trump’s efforts to suppress voting by mail are valid. Eventually, those agencies will act, and several of them are likely to do so before the midterms, and, then, the question of whether Trump can fundamentally alter how US elections are conducted will have to be decided by the courts.

Trump’s executive order, if fully implemented, could potentially change the results of federal elections and place Republicans who did not win in office. It also matters because Trump claims the power to decide how states conduct federal elections, despite no statute that authorizes his order — thus, potentially expanding his own powers and the power of all future presidents.

So, what does Trump’s executive order do?

Trump v. California primarily concerns two sections of Trump’s executive order.

Section 2 of the order includes a thinly veiled threat that state and local election officials will face prosecution if they allow voters who aren’t pre-approved by the Trump administration to vote by mail. 

On the surface, the first part of this section seems innocuous. It requires the Department of Homeland Security “compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State.” During a lower court proceeding in California, Trump’s Justice Department conceded that any such list would “necessarily be incomplete.” But the federal government’s decision to compile a partial list of eligible voters does not actually prevent anyone from voting.

The problem with Section 2 is that Trump’s call for DHS to compile this list is coupled with a statement that “the Attorney General shall prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of State and local officials or any others involved in the administration of Federal elections who issue Federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a Federal election.” 

Thus, as Judge Indira Talwani determined in her order blocking this provision, Section 2 “implicitly threatens enforcement…against election officials who furnish ballots to voters excluded” from the Trump administration’s incomplete lists. While the order does not explicitly state that an election official who mails a ballot to a lawful voter whose name does not appear on the Trump administration’s list will be prosecuted, Trump’s decision to couple his demand that the list be created with a threat of prosecution sends a clear message to election officials that they allow voters who are not on the list to vote at their own risk.

Moreover, as Talwani wrote in her opinion, one major reason why the federal government cannot compile an accurate list of all eligible voters is because the federal government’s records “do not necessarily track name changes (such as when a woman changes her name at marriage).” Women are more likely to vote for Democrats than men.

Additionally, Section 3 orders USPS to come up with new rules that require states to provide the federal government with a list of all voters who will receive a mailed ballot “no fewer than 60 days before the election,” and it forbids the post office from delivering ballots from voters whose names do not appear on the list. This section also outlines requirements for a specific kind of envelope for mail voting with certain design features — which, at the very least, creates a problem for states that have already purchased envelopes that do not comply with these new design requirements.

The Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, the power to decide how federal elections are conducted

The Constitution provides that states, and not the federal government, get to decide who is eligible to vote in a federal election. Article I of the Constitution, for example, provides that voters who possess “the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature” may vote for members of the US House. And the 17th Amendment uses similar language to describe who may vote for US senators.

Thus, because each state gets to determine who may vote in its state legislative races, states also have the power to determine who can vote for members of Congress.

The Constitution’s language governing presidential elections, meanwhile, is even more explicit that states — and not Trump — get to decide who is an eligible voter. That language provides that “each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” its presidential electors.

Thus, as Talwani concluded, no federal official, including the president, has the power to determine that only “United States citizens who will be above the age of 18” may vote in a particular federal election; only states have the authority to decide who may vote for members of Congress or the president. And the federal government certainly does not have the power to compile a list of eligible voters and threaten prosecution of any state official who provides a ballot to someone not on that list.

A separate provision of the Constitution lets states determine the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,” while also permitting Congress to “make or alter such Regulations.” Thus, while the federal government cannot determine who is eligible to vote in federal elections (except through constitutional provisions such as the 15th or 19th Amendments), Congress could conceivably pass a law regulating voting by mail.

But Trump is not Congress. And, according to Judge Talwani, “no law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS.”

Trump’s lawyers defend his executive order by claiming that it doesn’t do anything…yet

In their brief to the justices, Trump’s Justice Department did not actually argue that the executive order is legal (although they will likely do so in a later stage of this lawsuit). Instead, they argued that Judge Talwani’s decision blocking the executive order was “premature.” 

The thrust of DOJ’s argument is that, while the executive order announces several new election-related policies, it does not actually implement any of those policies. The executive order tasks DHS with compiling the incomplete list of eligible voters, it tasks DOJ with prosecuting state officials, and it tasks the Postal Service with coming up with the specific rules governing mailed ballots.

The Constitution does not permit anyone to file a lawsuit challenging a federal policy unless they can show they were injured in some way by that policy. Trump’s lawyers argue that, until the new election policies are fully implemented, none of the California plaintiffs can know whether they will be harmed by these policies or not.

It’s a plausible argument, but largely because DOJ’s brief makes a number of concessions that strip the executive order of any real vitality, at least until it is fully implemented by federal agencies.

The brief insisted, for example, that Section 2 should not be read to authorize prosecutions against state officials who send a ballot to someone who is not on Trump’s approved list of voters. “The Order does not deem it a crime, or even evidence of a crime, for States not to use the Lists when determining voter eligibility, and it does not direct the Attorney General to bring charges on such a theory,” it read.

Similarly, it denied that any of the executive order’s new policies governing envelopes and pre-approved voters who may vote by mail must actually be implemented, at least before the postal service issues its own rules regarding Trump’s new policies. According to the brief, “the Order does not ‘direct various changes to the voting-by-mail process,’” it merely “directs the President’s Executive Branch subordinates at the Postal Service to begin a deliberative policymaking process that may ultimately include some changes.”

While at least some of these concessions take liberties with the language of the executive order, they do potentially give the justices a third option to consider before they decide the California case. The justices could leave Talwani’s decision in full effect, or they could allow Trump to implement his new restrictions on voting. But they could also block Talwani’s order while simultaneously pointing to DOJ’s concessions and indicating that they expect Trump to honor those concessions.

If the justices take this third option, that would mean that the order would impose no obligations on the states for the time being and would similarly impose no new restrictions on voters until the agencies act. Litigation over the executive order would pause, and it would resume once the order is implemented by further agency action.

The Justice Department’s concessions in this case are fairly extraordinary, and they suggest that even Trump’s own legal team recognizes that it will be easier to persuade the courts to delay a reckoning over the executive order than it will be to convince them that the order is lawful. It remains to be seen, however, whether this Supreme Court will actually enforce the Constitution in this case — and whether they will do so right away or at some future date.

The prototypical Democrat vulnerable to a primary this year has been old, in Washington a long time, and vulnerable from the left.

But in Massachusetts, there’s a race that’s scrambling that formula. Sen. Ed Markey is 80, and he’s been in Congress for 50 years. But he’s been a stalwart ally of progressives; he was, for instance, the main Senate champion of the “Green New Deal.” And the leaders of the Democrats’ left flank, like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are swinging into action to try and defend him. “It’s not your age, it’s the age of your ideas. And in this race, I’m the youngest guy,” Markey has said.

His opponent, Seth Moulton, a 47-year-old Marine Corps veteran, also goes against type. While “moderate” and “establishment” often are treated as synonyms, Moulton has a history of pushing back against both progressive activists and older Democratic leaders. In his current run, he’s made generational change his main issue, including some blunt warnings about Markey’s age. 

“If Democrats win the Senate, it will almost certainly be by one vote, and we can’t afford to lose that vote due to a medical absence or emergency,” Moulton told me in an interview. “That’s not ageism, that’s just actuarial tables.”

But his Senate campaign isn’t the first time he’s taken on Democratic leaders. In 2018, he led a (failed) effort to stop Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker again, arguing again that the aging House leadership needed to clear a path for younger members. In 2024, he became one of the first prominent Democrats to bail on President Joe Biden after his disastrous debate, saying the president needed to “let new leaders rise up.”

The party establishment, Moulton told me, has “failed to be honest with the American people about the challenges we face.” He cited Democrats denying there was “an immigration problem at the southern border under Biden,” their insistence that Biden-era inflation was “transitory,” and their initial defense of Biden after the debate exposed his frailty.

Some of his criticisms of the party have rankled progressives. After President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024, he publicly criticized Democrats’ stance on trans athletes in stark terms, telling the New York Times he didn’t want his “two little girls” getting “run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete” — a statement that earned him intense backlash in Massachusetts. 

Now facing a Democratic primary electorate in a very liberal state, Moulton has tried to avoid being pigeonholed as a centrist. For instance, he said he supports abolishing ICE and prosecuting many of its officials, and he said he supports legislation like the Transgender Bill of Rights. Asked about his comments on transgender youth, he told me his intention “was not to hurt or offend anybody, but to say that we need to be willing to have these tough conversations as Democrats — and not simply cede this territory to Republicans.”

Instead, his principal argument has been that Markey should pass the torch — and that frustrations with what congressional Democrats’ ineffectiveness should in part be aimed at Markey. 

“One of the first votes I’ll take in the Senate will be against Chuck Schumer for leader,” Moulton said.

Markey, for his part, has accused Moulton of throwing trans kids “under the bus” and argued his own long record and support for causes from climate to Medicare-for-all shows him to be a reliable progressive ally. 

“Congressman Moulton is trying to walk a political tightrope,” Markey campaign manager Cam Charbonnier told Vox. “He’s working to appeal to moderate voters, but that coalition alone isn’t enough to win a Massachusetts Democratic primary. So, he’s also trying to appeal to progressives, but he doesn’t have the track record to back that up. The result is a campaign that’s trying to be everything to everyone, leaving voters questioning what he actually stands for.”

Polling in the race has been sparse, but the last two public surveys both showed a surprisingly close race ; Markey led by just 5 points in one and 6 in the other. However, there were many undecided voters, and we’ll soon see whether ad campaigns — like Markey’s new one featuring Sanders, Warren, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley — shift the numbers.

If Moulton wins the September 1 primary, or even comes close, it would suggest that the Democratic base’s frustrations with gerontocracy and Washington are more than stand-ins for a debate over ideology and reflect broader concerns about older politicians losing touch, being ineffective, aging, and even dying in office.

But if Markey ends up sailing to victory, it would send a message that it can be perilous for upstart Democratic challengers like Moulton to break with the progressive base — and that validation from the Sanders wing of the party can be a very valuable thing.

Sen. Ed Markey beat back a previous primary challenge by mobilizing progressives

Though Markey entered the House of Representatives 50 years ago, his team argued that his record shows he was frequently on the right side of history — that, for instance, he started focusing on climate change as far back as the 1980s and that he supported same-sex marriage in the 1990s. (Moulton bristled at this a bit, telling me, “He was elected as a pro-life Democrat who was opposed to the racial integration of Boston schools.”)

In 2009, he and Rep. Henry Waxman co-authored Democrats’ sweeping “cap-and-trade” climate bill, which was one of President Barack Obama’s top priorities. The bill, which became colloquially known as Waxman-Markey, died in the Senate.

When Sen. John Kerry joined Obama’s Cabinet as secretary of state, Markey ran for his open Senate seat. He was the more progressive candidate in a primary against Rep. Stephen Lynch, which he won by 15 percentage points.

But toward the end of Markey’s first full Senate term, an ambitious Democrat with a famous name — then-Rep. Joe Kennedy III, grandson of RFK (and nephew of RFK Jr.) — launched a primary bid against him, also with a message of generational change.

Markey’s initial polling was quite weak, he still wasn’t very well-known in the state, and he appeared to be in serious danger. But, unexpectedly, he became an online phenomenon of sorts, as young progressives, impressed by his Senate push for the Green New Deal and early endorsement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who has not weighed in this time), rallied to his side. His campaign’s message that he was a movement champion proved successful, and he ended up winning the primary by 11 points.

When Democrats had a trifecta in Washington again under President Joe Biden, they passed their climate bill. The new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, established the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a “green bank” of sorts. The concept, in various iterations, had been one of Markey’s main causes over the years, and its enactment was a major achievement. Yet, that success was short-lived, as the Trump administration is now attempting to dismantle the program.

Rep. Seth Moulton has been a thorn in the Democratic establishment’s side

Moulton, for his part, believes he can take down Markey, because he took down a long-time Democratic incumbent once before; that’s how he got his start in politics.

Rep. John Tierney had represented his northeastern Massachusetts district for nearly two decades, when Moulton challenged him in a 2014 primary. A longtime ally of Nancy Pelosi, Tierney became vulnerable due to a gambling scandal involving his family. (His wife’s brother was accused of racketeering for operating an illegal offshore casino, and Tierney’s wife was accused of preparing false tax returns. Both were convicted and sent to prison.)

In contrast, the 35-year-old Moulton was a fresh face — a Harvard grad and a decorated combat veteran who had served four Marine Corps tours in Iraq. He proved an effective fundraiser and campaigner, upsetting Tierney by 10 percentage points.

Yet, Moulton quickly grew frustrated with Washington. After Democrats’ 2016 defeat, he became one of the party’s most outspoken critics of Pelosi. Already, by 2017, there was talk he might run for president — and ample anonymous quotes from other Democrats disparaging him as opportunistic, grasping, and disloyal.

Moulton insisted throughout that he was making a case that went beyond personal ambition. Before the 2018 midterms, he started the Serve America PAC to try and elect more members with military or national service backgrounds who were skeptical of Democratic leaders — more people like him — to Congress. But when Democrats retook the House majority, Moulton’s high-profile effort to supplant Pelosi flamed out. 

So did his subsequent presidential bid. He was in the race for four months in 2019 but dropped out when he failed to qualify for debates, warning Democrats on his way out against “veering too far left” in their choice of candidate. 

But the latest round of Democratic failures — Biden’s debate face-plant and Kamala Harris’ defeat — spurred Moulton to make another attempt at higher office. 

“Someone who has been in Congress for half a century and will be 86 years old at the end of his next term is, in fact, too old,” Moulton told the Washington Post after launching his campaign last October. “If we haven’t learned the lessons of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden…then where are we going as a party?”

Is this a race about who’s the best progressive, or about who wants to shake up the way things are done?

In addition to the close polling in recent months, Moulton’s fundraising has been impressive — aided, Markey’s allies argued, by donors associated with private equity and crypto. (A pro-Markey Super PAC has fundraised heavily from unions, as well as some investors and corporate executives.)

But when Markey and Moulton faced off on the debate stage earlier this month, nothing even close to the Joe Biden catastrophe ensued. Markey insisted he’d never been more energized, and both candidates hit their preferred messaging points. For Markey, that meant portraying himself as a dependable progressive and Moulton as an unreliable ally.

“After the 2024 election, Congressman Moulton decided that he was gonna throw trans kids under the bus — the political bus — and blame them for the loss of the 2024 election.” Markey said. “Those kids are vulnerable. Those kids need love. Those kids don’t need to be scapegoated and blamed for what was wrong with the Democratic Party.”

But in Moulton’s interview with me, he said that “it’s very hard to find any fundamental differences in the issues” between him and Markey. 

“I’m an ally for all the people and causes on all these issues that Senator Markey and I agree on, and I’m very proud of how much my voting record aligns with Senator Markey’s on the major issues,” Moulton said. “But I’m not gonna just sit back and do what the establishment tells me to do, especially when the establishment is failing.”

There was a backup plan for getting oil out of the Middle East. We may need another one.

 On July 20, the Iran-backed Yemeni rebel movement known as the Houthis declared a “blockade” against their long-time enemy Saudi Arabia, and a short time later attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. Shortly afterward, several ships carrying Saudi crude oil through the Red Sea made abrupt U-turns to avoid going near the Yemeni coast.  

With Iran now blocking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea was supposed to be an alternative way to get oil out of the Middle East and to the world market. Now, though, the importance of the route has merely created fresh leverage in the long-simmering conflict between the Houthis and their longtime enemies in Saudi Arabia. These attacks were a major factor in pushing oil back over $100 a barrel last week.  

The Houthis have their own agenda partly unrelated to the Iran conflict. But in launching the Iran conflict, the US has inadvertently given them outsized influence in the region: The sea lane they control is more important than ever. Now, in opening up a new front, they may have just made the war harder to end. 

The Red Sea has become increasingly important to Saudi Arabia and energy markets as shippers have avoided Hormuz in recent months. Saudi Arabia has diverted around 70 percent of its oil exports via a pipeline connecting the oil fields on the Persian Gulf to the port of Yanbu on its Red Sea coast. This means that tankers need to use the Red Sea to get oil to Asia. As a result, the Red Sea now accounts for around 7 percent of the world’s energy supplies. 

This release valve is one reason why the price of oil — and the price of gas for American drivers — has not risen as much as many experts expected when the Hormuz crisis began shortly after the US-Israel strikes on Iran. 

But now, that release valve is also under threat, putting the region and the world in what shipping experts call a “double chokehold.”

The Houthis have used their location to cause chaos before: In 2023 and 2024, they attacked over 100 ships they accused of links to Israel, and dramatically drove down shipping through the Red Sea. Those attacks stopped after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire last year, but shipping has still not fully recovered. 

President Donald Trump has threatened both the Houthis and Iran with “major military punishment” over the attacks in recent days. And the attacks also make it likelier that the conflict in Iran could make oil pricier than ever, increasing political pressure on Trump. 

What do the Houthis want? 

The Houthis are a member of Iran’s network of regional proxies, known as the “Axis of Resistance,” along with Hezbollah, Hamas, and a number of Iraqi militias. But most experts believe that while they rely on Iranian support, they operate independently and don’t take their marching orders from Tehran. 

Officially known as Ansar Allah, the Houthis are members of the minority Zaydi sect of Shia Islam. They’ve been fighting for control of Yemen since the 1990s and took over Yemen’s capital city, Sanaa, in 2014, though most countries do not recognize them as Yemen’s legitimate government. 

The Houthis fought a brutal decade-long war against Yemen’s internationally recognized government and an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which ended with a UN-mediated ceasefire in 2022. 

The Saudi-Houthi peace has largely held since then, even as the Houthis gained global notoriety during the Gaza war. When this year’s war began, many expected the Houthis to join the fight against Iran’s enemies, the United States and Israel, but for the first few weeks of the conflict, they were conspicuously quiet. Their impact was felt in a different way, though. 

Iran’s success in using cheap drones and missiles to effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz almost certainly drew on lessons gained from the Houthi campaign in the Red Sea in 2023 and 2024.

In March, the Houthis made their first move toward actively joining the Iran war when they launched a round of missiles at Israel. But things really escalated in mid-July when they began launching attacks on Saudi Arabia in response to an attack on the Sanaa airport, which they blamed on the Saudis. (The initial attack was claimed by Yemen’s internationally-backed government.)

In addition to the Red Sea attacks, the Houthis also claimed an attack on a Saudi oil refinery last Saturday, the group’s first attack on Saudi energy infrastructure since 2022, followed by attacks on oil depots along the Red Sea coast on Sunday. Several Iran-backed militias in Iraq also carried out their own attacks on Saudi Arabia over the past few days. 

The Houthis have now entered the conflict, but it would be a mistake to view them just as Iranian proxies. They have their own demands and agenda in this fight. 

“When the whole Iran war started, they were kind of observing and waiting for the right moment,” said Mohammed al-Basha, a US-based security analyst and Yemen expert. Basha suspects that the Houthis saw the leverage and concessions Iran had gained throughout the region and wanted to exert some leverage of their own. “Their aggressiveness went from zero to 60 last week,” he said. “They’re all in.”

All in for what, exactly? The Houthis’ demands from the Saudis include billions in reparations payments and full control of their coastline and airspace. In the long term, they aim to be Yemen’s internationally recognized government. 

The Saudis, then, who fought a brutal and unpopular war against the Houthis that ended in a stalemate, are faced with the unappealing choice between placating the group by agreeing to its demands or a return to war. 

What about the US? The US carried out more than 1,000 airstrikes over 52 days against the Houthis in 2025. While this campaign, known as Operation Rough Rider, caused significant damage to the group’s infrastructure, it did not succeed in fully restoring shipping in the Red Sea. 

Trump has threatened retaliation, but given concerns over munitions stockpiles, the US capacity to retaliate, much less expand this war to a new front, is probably limited.

How many chokeholds is too many?

For the moment, the Bab el-Mandeb is not completely closed — shipping is down around 22 percent since the blockade was declared, but 28 ships were able to transit the strait on Monday. The Houthis maintain that their blockade targets only Saudi Arabia, but Chinese supertankers have been allowed to leave the Red Sea carrying Saudi oil.  

But shippers recall that during the Houthis’ last Red Sea campaign in 2024, they were theoretically only targeting ships linked to Israel, but had a pretty broad definition of “linked to Israel.”  Under these circumstances, many shippers, and more importantly their insurers, might not want to take the risk. 

“We’ve seen what the Houthis can do,” said Noam Raydan, an expert on energy and maritime shipping at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We know that they can sink ships. We know that they can hit a ship with drones, missiles, and then even board the ship. We know that they can hijack a vessel. This is why a lot of operators, in my opinion, would really be hesitant right now to go through the Bab al-Mandab.” 

There’s also still the risk that this new front in the war could escalate. Iran’s government has asked the Houthis to shut the Bab el-Mandeb entirely if the US launches airstrikes against Iran’s power network, which Trump has repeatedly threatened to do.

This adds a new complicating factor to the larger conflict in the Middle East. The fact that the price of oil never rose as high as many experts had predicted during Operation Epic Fury, the initial strikes in the spring and early summer, is probably one reason why Trump has often seemed willing to continue the conflict, rather than cutting a quick deal on Iran’s terms. But Saudi Arabia’s access to the Red Sea is one important reason why oil has not reached $120 or even $200 a barrel. A full closure of the Bab el-Mandeb would test even the ever-adaptable global oil industry’s ability to adapt.

It’s possible the Saudis may still be able to cut a deal with the Houthis that ends the attacks. But it’s also clear that for the foreseeable future, two of the Middle East’s most important energy chokepoints are going to be under continual threat of closure by adversaries of the United States. 

For now, oil can still leave the Red Sea via the Suez Canal at its northern end, then head toward Asia around the southern tip of Africa. (Since the largest tankers aren’t able to transit the Suez while fully loaded, this is a complicated process that involves them pumping their oil into a pipeline, then meeting it at the other end in the Mediterranean.) 

“It just gets harder and harder,” said Robin Mills, CEO of the Dubai-based energy analysis firm Qamar Energy. “Can they get all of the oil from Yanbu out through the Suez? I think they probably can but it’s a little bit tight. If [the Houthi campaign] were to expand, it becomes more of a problem.” 

The Suez Canal itself is also a potential target for disruption or sabotage, retired US Adm. James Stavridis recently warned. 

The disruptions at sea will increase interest in workaround projects such as a proposed pipeline from Iraq to Turkey, bypassing sea routes entirely, but these are still a long way off. The Houthis and their allies in Iraq also demonstrated this week that they can attack oil infrastructure and pipelines in addition to ships. 

The oil and shipping industries are nothing if not adaptable. Previous disruptions, whether the tanker that ran aground in Suez in 2021, the container ship pileups caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, or the Houthis’ previous Red Sea campaign, have been temporary. Goods eventually find their way to market, even if that means another month sailing around Africa.

But as the number of armed conflicts grow, and actors like the Houthis and Iran learn how to effectively weaponize the global economy’s chokepoints to punish much larger and more powerful adversaries, the stresses on the system are growing, and the question becomes whether there’s a breaking point.   

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.

Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is further limiting due process for asylum-seekers in the US.

What’s happening? On Tuesday, the administration issued a rule changing how some asylum requests are handled. Under the new policy, immigrants in more than 444,000 asylum cases could be denied the chance to speak with an asylum officer and claim asylum, which requires them to have experienced persecution, or the threat of persecution, in their home country because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinions, or another characteristic. 

Instead, those immigrants would be redirected to immigration judges — who could order their deportation without any additional process. 

The change, according to the administration, is intended to help clear a substantial backlog in the US asylum system, which has 1.4 million cases currently pending. But it fits a pattern by the Trump administration of dramatically curtailing access to asylum in the US. 

What’s the context? Under the second Trump administration, many previous immigration judges have been forced out or fired from their roles. Their replacements, as Bloomberg reported earlier this year, are minimally trained and instructed to deny most asylum claims outright. 

What’s the big picture? The Trump administration also has a long record of sending immigrants back into dangerous situations in their home countries, or even to countries to which they have no connection. 

Last year, as my colleague Ian Millhiser reported, the Supreme Court effectively allowed the administration to nullify the Convention Against Torture and send immigrants to war-torn countries like South Sudan. 

And those deportations are poised to get worse: In June, the Court also cleared the way for Trump to end temporary protected status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, without consideration of procedural rules. Now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is reportedly preparing to target hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the US for deportation, even though the island nation is dealing with serious and widespread gang violence. 

With less than 100 days until the 2026 midterm elections, don’t miss my colleague Astead Herndon’s new newsletter, The Midterms, Actually. Every week, Astead breaks down the big ideas and key people behind the political shifts shaping the 2026 elections. You can subscribe here.

And with that, it’s time to log off…

Want to spend less time on social media? Here’s some excellent advice from my colleague Constance Grady, available here with a gift link. 

Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!