This is "What I'm Hearing" — a somewhat daily guide to the stories that matter, drawn from the best pro-democracy political writers working right now, with my analysis on top.
Dissent Among the Generals
There is a formal mechanism in the U.S. military for telling the Secretary of Defense he is making a mistake. It’s called a non-concurrence, and it means: I will carry out this order, but I want the record to show I advised against it.
Six months into Trump’s war, four of the most senior commanders in the American military have filed one.
Alex Horton and Tara Copp of the Washington Post reported Saturday that the August 14 edition of the classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book contains warnings from the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as the four-star commanders responsible for Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Their assessment: sustaining large-scale operations against Iran is degrading America’s ability to respond to threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland. The Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Daryl Caudle, told Hegseth the Navy cannot sustain its current level of support because there is no anticipated end date. Adm. Samuel Paparo at Indo-Pacific Command objected to giving up a carrier strike group and destroyers. Formal non-concurrences were registered by the CNO and the commanders of European, Indo-Pacific, and Southern Command.
Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling explains in The Bulwark why this matters: “Non-concurrence is not insubordination. It doesn’t mean a commander will refuse an order. It means the commander is formally telling the secretary: I will execute this decision, but you need to understand the risk it creates in my area.”
The Pentagon’s response was to attack the reporting while conceding the facts. Spokesman Sean Parnell posted that publishing the assessments is “a crime” and “a betrayal of the force” — then, in the same statement, wrote: “Of course, we demand candid military advice. Non-concurs are standard. The Secretary sees them constantly.” So the document is real, the dissent is real. The crime is that you found out.
Dan Driscoll, a Yale Law classmate and close ally of JD Vance, resigned after months of friction with Hegseth over the purge of senior Army officers. The Atlantic reported he raised the firings directly with Trump, who was surprised by their scale. The United States Army, more than 450,000 active-duty soldiers, now has no confirmed secretary, no chief of staff, no operations general, and no Europe commander. The acting chief has halted a joint U.S.–Ukraine drone training program.
Trump’s reaction to all of this? Posting a fake video of a battle. Trump published an AI-generated clip captioned “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!” — Kharg being the terminal that handles roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports. The Defense Department confirmed the next morning that no such strike occurred. By 8:09 a.m. he was posting that “Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD!” Zeteo reports that three officials had no idea whether Trump knew the video was fake, and wouldn’t be surprised either way.
That same Zeteo reporting includes four U.S. officials and one Trump adviser saying the consensus inside the government is that we are losing. “We aren’t winning,” one senior official said. “Why are you asking me if I think we’re winning? What a stupid question.” Two of them said they went to reporters because they were disgusted by a propaganda push they described as “nothing but lies and distortions,” timed to the midterms.
The people who run the American military wrote down that this war is unsustainable, the President posted a fake video of a victory that didn’t happen, and the Pentagon’s response was to call journalism a crime. This is the result of Trump and Hegseth’s incompetence.
Read more: Washington Post via Spokesman-Review, The Bulwark, The Hill, Zeteo, Letters from an American, Robert Hubbell
One Bad Barcode Can Kill 10,000 Ballots
An anonymous federal official with direct knowledge of the Postal Service’s new mail-ballot system filed a whistleblower disclosure, released today by Sen. Richard Blumenthal and prepared by the lawyers at Whistleblower Aid. It describes a system built in a “rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process.”
Under the new rules, states submit a manifest for each batch of ballots, with a unique barcode assigned to every voter. USPS scans a sample against its portal. And as the complaint puts it: “if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state — effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters.”
One scanning error. Ten thousand ballots returned to sender. The whistleblower notes the obvious: “Even under ordinary circumstances this would be problematic because of predictable errors in any barcode scanning process.”
These are not ordinary circumstances. The whistleblower says systems like this typically take nine months to a year to debug. This one got four days of user testing because leadership was racing a September 1 implementation date. Workers on the project described it days before launch as a “s--- show.”
That’s a federal official saying, on the record through counsel, that the breakage may be the point.
USPS also appears to be ignoring a federal judge. The whistleblower says USPS kept building this after a federal judge blocked the rule. Blumenthal calls the implementation “perilously rushed and potentially unlawful” and has sent the disclosure to the Postal Service inspector general.
Blumenthal’s summary: “The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans. One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the USPS puts all of their votes at risk.”
Just to be clear, the rule that puts all this into implementation is still blocked. Judge Talwani’s hearing on a longer injunction was set for September 3rd, and this disclosure lands directly in that record. Nobody’s ballot has been rejected yet.
But do this: request your ballot now, return it as early as your state allows, and if you can vote in person, do that instead.
Read more: CNN, NBC News, CBS News, Votebeat, NPR, Hopium Chronicles
The Supreme Court Allows Trump’s “Likely Unlawful” Ballroom to Proceed
In an unsigned 5-4 shadow-docket order Monday, the Supreme Court let construction continue on the roughly 90,000-square-foot ballroom rising where Trump demolished the East Wing last fall. The majority never reached the question of whether it’s legal. It held that the National Trust for Historic Preservation — a nonprofit chartered by Congress specifically to protect public buildings — lacked standing, because it couldn’t show a “concrete and particularized” injury.
Robert Reich’s response is the shortest version: if the National Trust lacks standing, “I can’t imagine who would.”
The dissent is where this gets interesting. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three Democratic appointees and wrote that the construction “is likely unlawful” under the statute barring building “on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.”
The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court thinks Trump’s ballroom is “unlawful” and yet five justices vote to allow it to proceed. Another example of this Supreme Court bending itself backward to allow Trump to do whatever he wants. Time to expand the court.
Read more: Zeteo, Robert Hubbell, Robert Reich, Puck
That’s your Tuesday. Four of the military’s most senior commanders formally told Hegseth this war is unsustainable. A USPS whistleblower says one bad barcode can send 10,000 ballots back. John Roberts says the ballroom is probably illegal, but nobody’s allowed to sue.
The midterms are 63 days away.
I will vote in person. But doesn’t this USPS sh..show hurt Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats? Or maybe it just makes such a mess that the election is called invalid. Thanks, Brian.