Election Day is still Nov. 3

Trump ponders delaying the November election; a new Mars rover is on its way to the Red Planet.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Cameron Peters.

TOP NEWS

Can Trump delay the November election? No.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

On Thursday, President Donald Trump went on Twitter to dash off a quick thought: Should we, maybe, delay the November election, which polls currently suggest he is poised to lose? [Twitter / Donald J. Trump]
The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is that Trump doesn't have the legal authority to do a thing about the November election — it would require an act of Congress to change the date. [Vox / Ian Millhiser]
Plus, as presidential historian Michael Beschloss points out, a US presidential election has never in history been delayed — not even during the Civil War, the 1918 flu pandemic, or World War II, to name just a few instances. [Twitter / Michael Beschloss]
Even GOP lawmakers have signaled that Trump's suggestion was a bridge too far. "It doesn't matter what one individual in this country says, we still are a country based on the rule of law," Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said Thursday. [Twitter / Manu Raju]
The first part of Trump's tweet, about mail-in and absentee voting, is also false. There's no real difference between the two, and the incidence of voter fraud — both for mail-in and in-person voting — is so vanishingly small as to be meaningless. [NPR / Miles Parks]
As Vox's David Roberts — a Washington state resident like your newsletter author — wrote in 2017, universal vote-by-mail states like Washington and Oregon have shown the method can be safe, efficient, and, for some, preferable to voting in person on the day of the election. [Vox / David Roberts]
That doesn't mean there's no reason to worry about November, though. Increased mail-in voting during a pandemic means that the US Postal Service will be more vital than ever — but the agency is squarely in Trump's crosshairs. [New Yorker / Steve Coll]
Senate Democrats are among those sounding the alarm. Earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote to the USPS to request more details about how the agency plans to ensure mail-in voting goes smoothly in November. [Vox / Li Zhou]
Among the other potential election-day disasters sketched by Garrett M. Graff for Politico, an anemic USPS and insufficient state-level vote-by-mail funding could mean massive delays in determining a winner, as well as potential large-scale disenfranchisement if ballots arrive late. [Politico / Garrett M. Graff]

Seven months 'till Mars

Early this Thursday in Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA successfully launched the Mars rover Perseverance on its journey to the Red Planet, where it will search for traces of life. [Twitter / NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover]
That trip will take a while — the rover is set to land on Mars in February next year at the Jezero Crater, which scientists now believe once held water about 3.5 billion years ago. [CNET / Jackson Ryan]
As Vox's Brian Resnick explains, that landing will be the hard part — what members of the Perseverance team have described as "seven minutes of terror." Rockets and a "sky crane" will be involved, and the landing will be filmed. [Vox / Brian Resnick]
For now, Perseverance is Mars-bound on an Atlas V rocket, as is an experimental helicopter called Ingenuity. Not only will it be hunting for evidence of life when it arrives, but the rover will perform tests that could help lay the groundwork for a future manned Mars mission. [NYT / Kenneth Chang]
Because opportunities for a Mars launch are infrequent, Perseverance is just one of three Mars missions to take place this month. Previously, China successfully launched a rover onboard its Tianwen-1 rocket, and the UAE launched a probe. [CNN / Ashley Strickland]
Both are historic: The Chinese launch marks the country's first attempt to land a craft on Mars, and the UAE is now the first Arab nation to launch an interplanetary mission. [Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor]

MISCELLANEOUS

The US economy had its single worst quarter on record between April and June this year.

[CNN / Anneken Tappe]

"Democracy is not a state. It is an act": Rep. John Lewis was buried in Atlanta Thursday. Read his final essay in the New York Times. [NYT / John Lewis]
Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has died of Covid-19. [Washington Post / John Wagner and Robert Costa]
It's almost August, and that means it's almost time for Joe Biden to announce his VP pick. Here's who's on the list. [Vox / Ella Nilsen]

VERBATIM

"If politicians want to honor John ... there's a better way than a statement calling him a hero. You want to honor John? Let's honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for."

[Barack Obama calls for the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in his eulogy for Rep. John Lewis / Twitter]