August 26, 2026 · Both blocks on the mail-voting order fell in 48 hours, the lawyers arrive in the data-center fight, and a diamond floats

Two courts took eight weeks off the calendar in forty-eight hours. On Monday the Supreme Court, six to three, lifted one of the two blocks on the president's order restricting mail-in voting — with Justice Jackson calling the result a "Kafkaesque nightmare" that "needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty" into the midterms. This morning the district judge who issued the second block vacated it herself, citing that ruling. Both are gone, ten weeks out, and about two dozen states responded by suing the Postal Service the same day. Then: NVIDIA reports tonight into a seven-day slide it only just snapped, while Taiwan indicts nine people over illegal chip exports to China — one of them an NVIDIA employee. The data-center fight arrives in federal court, with developers suing towns on constitutional grounds and Kansas cities suing their own petitioning residents. The commodity futures regulator quietly opens the door to trading compute itself. And on the fifth anniversary of Abbey Gate, the appeal window closes for the editors the Pentagon fired. Plus: a diamond that floats. Sourced; the analysis is Anna Dudley's.