Fetterman's Ghosting Problem, the Mail Ballot Block, and Germany's Far-Right Surge

MayaOkay, David, I need caffeine and I need it now because today is a lot.

DavidWhen is it not?

MayaFair, but seriously, Fetterman's office is ghosting people, we've got a judge slapping down mail ballot rules right as ballots go out, and Germany's headed into a wild election this weekend.

DavidSo a light Tuesday.

MayaBasically.

DavidI'm Dave.

MayaAnd I'm Maya. This is the Morning Rundown.

DavidThree stories, three headaches.

MayaConstituents saying they can't reach Fetterman's staff.

DavidThen the fight over who actually controls how mail ballots are handled.

MayaRight when ballots are already in the mail.

DavidBad timing.

MayaThe worst.

DavidRight, and it's the kind of thing that makes you wanna just start yelling at the TV before your coffee even kicks in.

MayaSave it for the segment.

DavidAnd then Germany, where the establishment's watching the far-right numbers climb.

MayaSounds familiar.

DavidDoesn't it, though?

MayaWe'll get into why it rhymes in a minute.

DavidCan't wait.

MayaAll right, coffee's kicking in. Let's start with Fetterman.

DavidStraight into it.

MayaSo John Fetterman is in the news again, and it is not the good kind.

DavidYeah, this one's rough. There's a new CBS News piece where a former staffer basically confirms Fetterman blows off huge chunks of the actual job.

MayaWait, like what specifically?

DavidConstituent work, casework, the stuff senators are supposed to grind through every week.

MayaThat's wild, right? Like, that's the job.

DavidThat's the whole job, basically.

MayaI mean, that's the stuff people actually notice, like when their case is stuck at some federal agency, and they just need someone in that office to make a call.

DavidRight. It's not glamorous, but it's the whole reason people trust having a senator in the first place.

MayaOkay, but it gets worse. There's a Wall Street Journal report, and Spotlight PA laid out what's in it.

DavidThe hearings thing?

MayaThe hearings thing. More than a dozen former staffers told them he skipped 11 out of 12.

David11 out of 12?

Maya11 out of 12, and he had aides mark him present anyway.

DavidThat's not even hiding it well.

MayaAnd there's a quote in there. He told his own aides, quote, "I truly don't care about getting on a Schumer conference call."

DavidI mean, come on. That's your own leadership's call.

MayaRight.

DavidSo how are Democrats reacting? Because this feels like the kind of thing they'd usually circle the wagons on.

MayaNot this time. Fox News picked up on it, and two Pennsylvania Democrats went right at him on X.

DavidWho?

MayaChris Deluzio and Brendan Boyle. Boyle's a sitting congressman from the same state.

DavidAnd they didn't hold back?

MayaDeluzio said Pennsylvania is going to, quote, "Do something about it in 2028."

DavidWhoa. That's not a staffer venting anonymously. That's a colleague putting a date on it.

MayaYeah. 2028's his re-election year, so that's basically a warning shot.

DavidDoes he even show up for the stuff that matters back home?

MayaThat's the other layer to this. The Washington Times piece notes he's been skipping things like a police funeral.

DavidA police funeral.

MayaWhile still doing plenty of hits on conservative media.

DavidWhich, I mean, we'll take the ratings, but that's a strange balance for a Democratic senator.

MayaIt gets stranger. There's polling in that same piece showing he's more popular with Republicans right now than his own party.

DavidThat's such a specific kind of political trouble, where the people who'd usually defend you don't want to, and the people who'd usually attack you kinda like you.

MayaIt's almost its own category.

DavidHere's what gets me, though. This isn't some partisan hit job. CBS isn't exactly a conservative outlet, and neither is Spotlight PA.

MayaRight, and that's what makes it land different. When it's his own former staff, his own colleagues describing the same pattern, that's not spin.

DavidIt's just, does the job get done or not?

MayaAnd by his own former staff's account, it mostly isn't.

DavidDo you think Pennsylvania actually primaries him?

MayaDeluzio sounded like he's laying groundwork for it.

DavidThat's a long way off still, 2028.

MayaSure, but primaries get built years in advance, not overnight.

DavidThat's fair. The groundwork starts now, even if the vote's later.

MayaLong way off, but the reporting doesn't wait for election years. Neither does whoever's actually deciding how ballots get run in this country.

DavidFunny you say that, because that's a fight happening right now, not in 2028.

MayaYeah. There's a judge who just kept blocking the administration on mail voting rules, and ballots are already going out.

DavidSo while one senator's fighting to keep his job for skipping the basics, there's a whole separate fight over who actually controls the rules everybody's voting under.

MayaDifferent problem, same question. Who's actually calling the shots?

DavidLet's get into that one.

MayaSo here's where it stands.

DavidA federal judge named Indira Talwani just extended Trump's executive order on mail ballots.

MayaWait, extended? I thought that was already blocked.

DavidIt was, temporarily. She'd already issued a restraining order stopping the Postal Service from enforcing the new rules, and now she's making it stick going into the midterms.

MayaOkay, so walk me through what the actual order does, because "regulate mail ballots" sounds like a headline, not a policy.

DavidIt's about standardizing when ballots can be counted and how they're verified nationwide. Trump's team wanted one uniform standard instead of 50 different state rules.

MayaWhich honestly doesn't sound insane on its face.

DavidRight, and that's kind of the split here. The idea sounds reasonable, but the execution is where it falls apart.

MayaSo what's an actual voter supposed to feel about that? Like, if my state's ballot verification process doesn't match whatever new standard gets set, does that change what happens to my ballot?

DavidPotentially, yeah. If your state's process doesn't line up with whatever new standard gets set, your ballot could end up getting treated differently than it would've last cycle.

MayaThat's the part that actually worries me, not the abstract policy fight, but some individual voter finding out their ballot got treated differently because two levels of government couldn't agree on a rule in time.

DavidNo, and that's the tension here, but the timing is the real problem. North Carolina started mailing ballots out Friday.

MayaThe same day as the ruling?

DavidSame day, and election officials in a bunch of states are saying it's just too late now to retrofit their systems to match new federal requirements.

MayaRight. You can't reprint and remail ballots that are already in the mail truck.

DavidExactly, the argument state officials are making.

MayaSo is this Talwani just protecting the status quo, or is she actually right that you can't flip the rules a month out?

DavidI mean, legally, she's on solid ground on the timing piece. Practically, I get why people are frustrated a single district judge in Massachusetts can freeze a national policy.

MayaOne judge, 50 states.

DavidI get the instinct to roll your eyes at that, but that's also just how the court system's built. Somebody has to be first to rule.

MayaSure, but doesn't it bother you that one court in Massachusetts is effectively setting election policy for states clear across the country?

DavidIt bothers me a little, yeah, but the alternative is the executive branch just rewriting ballot rules unilaterally a month before an election, and that bothers me more.

MayaOkay, that's fair. I just think there's something uncomfortable about either version of that story.

DavidThat's the part that gets people. You've got a president trying to set one standard for ballot security and one court blocking it.

MayaAnd the administration's not just taking it, right?

DavidNo, they've already filed to appeal.

MayaSo this isn't over.

DavidNot even close. This could easily still be tied up in courts when ballots are already being counted.

MayaWhich is kind of the nightmare scenario for both sides. Nobody wants litigation happening while votes are already cast.

DavidRight. And look, I don't think it's crazy to want uniform rules on something as basic as mail voting. The states just have a real logistics complaint too.

MayaBoth things can be true.

DavidThey can.

MayaSo practically, what happens between now and November if this appeal drags on?

DavidBallots keep going out under the old state-by-state rules because that's the status quo the block protects. If the administration wins on appeal, whatever changes it wants would have to get sorted out awfully close to Election Day.

MayaWhich just sounds like chaos for county clerks trying to actually count these things.

DavidIt is, and that's really the underlying story here, not who's right on the law, but whether anyone can move this fast without breaking something.

MayaBefore I forget, this same fight, who gets to set the rules when voters and the people running the system don't trust each other, it's not just an American thing right now.

DavidYeah?

MayaIt's happening in Germany too, and honestly, the numbers over there make our fight look small. So Germany's got its own version of this fight brewing, and it's actually coming to a head this weekend.

DavidSaxony-Anhalt, right? That's the, uh, state election everyone's watching.

MayaYeah, and BBC is reporting that if the AfD wins outright there, it'd be the first time a far-right party held state power in Germany since World War II.

DavidWait, since the war? That's not a small thing to say out loud.

MayaYeah, and it's worth sitting with that for a second before we get into the numbers.

DavidTake your time. This is the kinda headline that deserves it.

MayaNo, it's not, and it's not some long shot either.

DavidHow close are we talking?

MayaAl Jazeera has AfD polling above 40% heading into Sunday.

David40?

MayaAnd the CDU, Merz's Party, sitting around 20.

DavidThat's not close. That's a blowout.

MayaBasically two to one.

DavidSo walk me through what winning outright in a state like that actually means in practice.

MayaIt means the AfD wouldn't need anyone else's votes to govern Saxony-Anhalt. That's very different from being a loud minority in the legislature.

DavidSo what's Merz's plan if that number holds?

MayaHe's already ruled out working with the AfD.

DavidAnd the left party too, from what I've read.

MayaRight. Both flatly off the table.

DavidSo he's boxed in on two sides at once.

MayaWhich just means Merz has to find enough allies among the remaining moderate and central left parties, assuming those numbers are even large enough after everyone else loses ground to the AfD.

DavidThat's the quiet part of the story. It's not just about the AfD ceiling. It's about whether there's anyone left to build a majority without them, and that math gets harder every cycle.

MayaWhich is kinda the story of European politics right now, honestly.

DavidYeah. You look at France, Italy, the Netherlands, it's the same shape over and over.

MayaVoters getting fed up with immigration policy, cost of living, and just the same parties running the show for decades.

DavidAnd when the mainstream parties won't budge, people don't moderate. They swing hard.

MayaIt's almost a formula at this point. Stagnant growth and immigration debate nobody in the mainstream wants to touch honestly, and a populist party willing to just say the quiet part out loud.

DavidAnd once one region proves it can work, other regions start looking at it as a viable option instead of a protest.

MayaThat's what's happening in Saxony-Anhalt. It's an eastern state, historically rougher economy, and the AfD's been building there for years.

DavidIt's not really a protest vote anymore if the numbers hold.

MayaNo. 40% is a governing coalition on its own.

DavidAnd a state level win like that becomes the template every other state party points to in the next cycle.

MayaWhich is exactly why national leaders in Berlin are watching this so closely, even though it's technically just one state.

DavidDo we know how Sunday shakes out?

MayaNobody does yet. That's the honest answer.

DavidAt least you admitted it.

MayaI'm not going to sit here and predict a foreign election on a Thursday taping.

DavidFair, but if it goes the way the polling suggests, that's a headline out of Germany that reshapes how people talk about the whole European project.

MayaEstablishment parties on defense, populists gaining ground. Sound familiar?

DavidA little bit, yeah.

MayaEither way, this isn't a one-off. It's part of a pattern playing out across the continent right now.

DavidYeah, and it's worth watching regardless of which way Sunday breaks.

MayaWe'll know Sunday night.

DavidThat's the rundown for today. So zoom out for a second. Fetterman skipping his own hearings, a judge freezing ballot rules mid-mailing, Germany about to hand real power to a party that didn't have any five years ago.

MayaYeah.

DavidDifferent countries, different stories, but it's the same fight. Who answers to voters and who just assumes they'll keep showing up anyway?

MayaWow, David, look at you tying a bow on it.

DavidI try.

MayaNo, but it's true. Every one of these stories is somebody in charge finding out the people underneath them are paying way closer attention than they thought.

DavidSunday's gonna tell us a lot about whether Germany's establishment already lost that bet.

MayaAnd we'll be watching Pennsylvania right along with it.

DavidAbsolutely.

MayaIt's been a dense one today, but that's honestly kind of the point of doing this every single morning.

DavidYeah. Better to hear it here first than piece it together from five different feeds later.

MayaAlright. That's it for us today.

DavidStay sharp out there.

MayaAnd that's the Rundown. See you tomorrow.