Three Weeks After Letting It Take Effect, the Supreme Court Reverses Course and Blocks Trump's Mail-In Ballot Rule 7-2 — Trump Calls the Two Dissenters "Legends Both" and Says His Own Appointees Are "a Shell of Their Original Selves," While Schumer Says His "Scheme Is Dead"
The Supreme Court on September 14 blocked the Postal Service mail-ballot rule at the center of Trump's March executive order — new envelope, tracking-barcode and voter-list requirements that critics said would disenfranchise voters with too little time before the midterms to implement. The order was 7-2, with only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting; none of Trump's three appointees, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh, sided with the administration. Kavanaugh's concurrence found the rule likely had statutory backing in principle but was "arbitrary and capricious" to apply this close to the election. The ruling reverses the posture of an August 24 Supreme Court stay that had let the rule move forward, and is a sharp defeat for a policy the administration had defended as an anti-fraud measure. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the rule's "regulation of the U.S. mail — not federal elections — is plainly constitutional," while Trump attacked his own appointees on Truth Social as "merely a shell of their original selves" and praised the two dissenters as "legends both." Democrats, who had spent weeks warning the rule would suppress mail voting, celebrated the reversal. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the president's "scheme is dead," and Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper called the decision a rejection of Trump's latest "attempt to infringe on Americans' right to vote."
“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves. The Court's inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History.”