The Supreme Court granted an emergency stay on Thursday blocking a district court order that would have allowed New Hampshire voters to use student IDs as evidence of identity at the polls. The underlying state law, HB 323, removed student IDs from the list of expressly valid forms of voter ID, effective June 2, 2026. A federal judge had ruled on Oct. 2 that Secretary of State David Scanlan exceeded his authority by issuing guidance barring student IDs even as backup evidence under the state's "safety-valve" provision, which permits "any other evidence that reasonably establishes" identity. The stay means that guidance is blocked pending appeal in the First Circuit and any Supreme Court review.
The Court's conservative majority applied the Purcell principle — the doctrine that federal courts should not alter election rules on the eve of an election. The majority said the district court failed to justify deviating from that principle. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing the lower court's order was designed to address official misinformation about voting rules rather than change the law, and that it actually promoted the interests Purcell was meant to protect.
The Supreme Court granted a stay on Thursday blocking a lower court order that would have allowed student IDs to be used as evidence of identity for voting in New Hampshire, siding with the state and Republicans ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.
ABig one from the Supreme Court tonight, and it lands right in the middle of a Senate race.
BStudent IDs in New Hampshire. The Court just said no — you can't use them to vote.
AThe state passed a law last year that took student IDs off the list of valid voter ID.
AA federal judge said the Secretary of State went too far by blocking them even as backup evidence — the safety-valve provision lets you use anything that reasonably proves who you are.
BSo the judge says, students can show their college ID as supporting proof. The state says no. And tonight the Supreme Court sided with the state.
AThe majority leaned on the Purcell principle — courts shouldn't rewrite election rules this close to voting day.
BHere's the part that gets me. The Court's reason is don't change rules twelve days before an election.
AJustice Jackson made exactly that point in her dissent. She said the lower court wasn't changing the law — it was fixing misinformation.
AThe state's own website had been telling students since October second that their IDs could be used.
BSo you have a judge correcting a publicized mistake, and the Supreme Court blocks the correction to prevent confusion. How does that prevent confusion?
AI'm not going to defend the timing optics. But the Purcell principle exists for a reason.
AWhen courts tinker with voting rules at the last minute, you get chaos in the polling place and endless litigation. Sometimes the cleanest answer is: status quo, live with it.
BThe status quo was a district court order from October second. The Supreme Court is the one that just changed it.
AFair point. I'll give you that one.
BAnd real students who read the state's website and planned to vote with their college ID — they show up and get turned away. That's not chaos prevention, that's chaos.
ANBC News frames it as a win for Republicans. It's a Senate seat between John Sununu and Chris Pappas, and student turnout tends to run one way.
BThat's the subtext of every one of these fights, and nobody says it out loud.
ABut I do think the Court's majority was honest about its reasoning: we don't do last-minute changes. Whether you like the outcome, it's a consistent rule.
BA consistent rule that produced an inconsistent result for the students who read the state's own website. I'll leave it there.
BDifferent world entirely: a Florida mayor allegedly stole from the exact COVID relief program she helped create.
AThat one's circulating on X via Zerohedge. No official charging documents I could find yet, so treat it as an unconfirmed report.
BIf true — a mayor raiding pandemic money that her own office helped design — that's genuinely brazen.
AIt's not the first time local officials have been accused of dipping into relief funds. The scale is what matters. Grand theft suggests it wasn't a procedural mistake.
BWe'll wait for the court filing. But if you helped build the program and then took from it, that's a special kind of arrogance.
AMeanwhile, Polymarket is posting that New York City voted to ban horse-drawn carriages starting June 2028.
BI'll believe that when I hear it from the City Council, not a prediction market. There have been attempts to ban carriages for years.
ANo official confirmation yet, so it stays a claim until the Council actually votes on it.
BJune 2028 is a long runway. Plenty of time for that one to get overturned, delayed, or forgotten entirely.
AOne last note — a whale just moved two thousand forty-nine Bitcoin into Coinbase Institutional.
BRoughly a hundred sixty-seven million dollars. When a whale puts coins onto an exchange, the market reads it as potential selling pressure.
AInstitutional account, though. Could be custody, could be collateral, could be a prelude to a block trade. Nobody knows.
BNobody ever knows. That's what makes watching the blockchain both wonderful and useless.