Weeks before the 2026 midterm elections, the Trump administration finds itself at a crossroads between its stated mission to secure the ballot and the courts' repeated refusal to let it do so. Attorney General Todd Blanche defended new mail voting restrictions before CBS News, invoking common sense where evidence proved elusive — a posture that speaks to a deeper tension in democratic life: the distance between the fear of fraud and its documented reality. Federal judges have blocked the rules, the Supreme Court declined to intervene, and yet the Justice Department presses forward, gathering v