The Supreme Court Lets Trump's Mail-Voting Order Move Forward 71 Days Before the Midterms — "A Giant Leap Forward" or "A Dagger Into the Heart of Our Democracy"
On Monday, August 24, 2026, the Supreme Court handed the Trump administration an interim victory on its effort to restrict who receives a mail-in ballot before the November midterms. In an unsigned emergency-docket order that divided the justices along ideological lines, the Court lifted the injunction U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani entered in June, which had blocked key provisions of President Trump's March 2026 executive order from taking effect in the 23 states and the District of Columbia that sued — a group that includes Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed adult U.S. citizens in each state, requires states that use mail balloting to hand the federal government lists of every registered voter receiving a mail or absentee ballot in a federal election, and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to decline to deliver mail ballots from states that do not comply. The Postal Service issued its final rules on August 22, adding new ballot design standards and serialized barcodes on outgoing and return envelopes. The majority wrote that its "disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, warning the decision creates a "Kafkaesque nightmare" that "needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, wrote that the order "merely postpones adjudication" of whether the president may direct the administration of a state-run election at all. The ruling does not end the litigation. A second injunction Talwani issued on August 11 in a suit brought by the League of Women Voters and Democratic Party committees blocks the order nationwide and remains in force, and the states have said they will challenge the Postal Service's new rules. Democratic senators, governors and attorneys general cast the decision as sanctioning voter suppression weeks before ballots go out; Republicans who have long pushed to curb mail voting called it a win for election security and renewed their push for the SAVE America Act.
“We'll use every tool in our toolbox to ensure they know the truth about our elections. We'll follow the law. We'll protect the right to vote.”