Nadia Haddad

The other Supreme Court election ruling from Friday, explained well in under 90 seconds. By 6 to 3 the Court let the administration’s expanded SAVE database back into use for checking voters’ citizenship. Kaufman gives both halves: the majority says the government has an obligation to answer election officials’ requests, Justice Jackson says burdening even a few lawful voters outweighs the government’s harm. She also mentions voters the system flagged wrongly.

When students ask me what a ruling “does”, I send them to the order itself. The majority says out loud that the 90-day rule on purging voter rolls limits what this changes before November.

“To be sure, that moratorium limits the potential impact of staying the District Court’s order in this case. Still, all agree that the order prevents the Federal Government from using the modified SAVE program to conduct individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law during this period.”

SDepartment of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters, No. 26A308 (Sept. 25, 2026)supremecourt.gov

Then read the dissent. Same point from the other side.

“But if there is a bright side to today’s opinion deciding otherwise, it is that the per curiam will likely have minimal short-term impact, as States will at most conduct individualized voter-roll maintenance using the modified SAVE system ahead of the November elections.”

SDepartment of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters, No. 26A308 (Sept. 25, 2026)supremecourt.gov

Votebeat on what does change: bulk checks can restart after the election, individual checks can happen now. They also clear up a mix-up I hear constantly. The SAVE Act in Congress and the SAVE database are unrelated, despite the name.

“However, as a result of the ruling, the Trump administration will be able to restart use of the SAVE system to scrutinize state voter rolls after the election, and election officials will be able to use the SAVE system to check the citizenship of individual voters in the meantime as well.”

VSupreme Court OKs use of federal citizenship tool to vet voters, but midterm impact will be limitedvotebeat.org

This is the most useful minute of coverage I’ve seen, because she actually tried it. For now America.gov is a search engine that writes its answer in sentences and links you to the pages it pulled from. It doesn’t file anything for you yet. You still take the steps yourself.

That’s not nothing. Half of what I do at a reference desk is know which of a dozen agency pages is the right one, and a tool that reads all 29,000 sites could do that part well. What to teach people: open the sources it links, check the date on the page, and don’t treat a confident paragraph as a decision from the agency.

Read up on the history first, says Bailey, which is the speech I give every class before a museum trip, and nobody listens. His point is that Edward, William and Harold are hard to keep straight in your few precious minutes in front of it. For most visitors he suggests the art instead, the borders full of birds and beasts, which is where a ten-year-old looks first anyway.

“The story of Edward the Confessor’s death, William the Conqueror’s return to England and the defeat of Harold is complex and difficult to grasp within one’s precious minutes in the exhibition. But nearing the end, the ferocity of the 1066 Battle of Hastings is all too powerful. With limited time in front of the tapestry, having read up on the history beforehand enhances the experience.”

TReview | ‘£1 a minute’: is the British Museum's Bayeux Tapestry exhibition worth it?theartnewspaper.com